Page 75 of Revert
No matter that we had already loved each other across countless lifetimes, he insisted on a proper courtship, starting from the very beginning—the way he would have pursued me when I first moved to Thorndale, had he been free to do so.
It started with a note slipped beneath my door one early morning, written in his familiar looping hand:Would you do me the honor of walking through the garden with me this afternoon…under full chaperone supervision, of course. I promise to behave. Mostly.
True to his word, our ever-exasperated guard, Halric, trailed us on every outing. He bore our ridiculous affection with the grim endurance of a man who’d seen far too much…and still pretended to see nothing. He averted his eyes when our fingersbrushed beneath the low-hanging branches of the orchard, turned suspiciously deaf when Castiel whispered stolen poetry beside rose-covered trellises, and he only sighed when Castiel tried to feed me a strawberry in front of an unsuspecting palace servant.
For each of Castiel’s adorable antics, I tried to act properly scandalized…only to be overcome by an unrestrained smile or a fit of unsuppressed laughter. Castiel simply grinned and offered me an unrepentant kiss, which I always enthusiastically returned.
He planned picnics beneath sun-dappled trees and once transformed a forgotten alcove of the library into a reading haven filled with my favorite books, a quilted window seat, and a handwritten guide to which stories included happy endings.
“You deserve to be wooed,” he said solemnly when I teased him for going overboard after a surprise midnight serenade—sung off-key from below my balcony, with a lute he couldn’t play. It was so utterly unlike the stoic crown prince I’d once known, but was proof he also was healing—shedding the shadows the old king had twisted around him like cords to slowly uncover the light he’d always buried to survive.
“Properly and thoroughly,” he promised, holding my hand with reverence. “Until you tire of me.”
I hadn’t ever tired of him in all my previous lives, and I had no plans to in this one.
For my part, I met Castiel’s courtship with enthusiastic mischief…and a few strategies of my own, determined to emerge as victor in this newest game of ours.
I made it a game to draw laughter from him at the most unexpected times. Once, I sent him a note disguised as a formal summons from the royal council—only for him to open it during a meeting and find a terrible drawing of a duck wearing a crown. Another time, I conspired with the cook to deliver a dinnershaped like a heart, complete with carved carrot roses. I would whisper things in his ear at diplomatic functions, just to see the corner of his mouth twitch despite himself. He’d try to remain composed, but I always caught the glimmer of amusement in his eyes, a spark I lived for.
We held hands beneath council tables when no one was looking, stole kisses in corridors dim with candlelight, and once shared a forehead touch that lasted far too long for propriety at a state banquet. And when the laughter quieted, and a memory surfaced—of pain, or guilt, or the ache of everything we had once lost—I was there for those moments, too.
He held me when I wept over my father’s final letter, fingers clutched around parchment still warm from travel. I had left the court just in time to be at his side, granted the freedom I’d never had in the past beneath the previous king’s iron-clad rule—a freedom Castiel himself ensured. When I returned to the castle draped in mourning black, Castiel didn’t offer words—he simply held me until the tears gave way to silence.
He was also not spared his own grief. Repairing the damage his father had inflicted on the kingdom was not a clean wound, but one that bled in layers. There were difficult nights where the people doubted his sincerity, where the nobles resisted change, where he feared he’d never be anything more than the echo of a tyrant’s son. I was his quiet armor through it all, just as he had once been mine.
Despite these shadows, our days were filled with light. What had once been a gilded cage became a golden palace for my dreams—not because the halls changed, but because the life within them had. Time no longer held me in stasis by spellwork or fear, but paused willingly, often in those sacred in-between moments of reverence and joy. We didn’t forget the past, but grew stronger from it.
I found myself caring about absurd yet tender details—whether my braid was arranged just so, or if I wore the deep twilight blue he once confessed was his favorite. I wore it as often as I could get away with, just to see his eyes catch on it.
The butterflies in my stomach were new—lighter than the adrenaline of rebellion, gentler than the ache of impending loss. They came with shared laughter, lingering glances, the thrill of a knock at my door I always hoped was him. For the first time, we weren’t holding tight because we were running out of time…but holding on because we finally had all the time in the world to fall into a deep, abiding love.
Time passed. A courtship became a marriage, a marriage became a life, our very own happily ever after.
The ruins where we once kissed beneath crumbling stone now stood rebuilt, not into a monument, but into a quiet sanctuary—a place that remembered the moments across every timeline. We returned there often—sometimes to talk, other times to be still. We planted wildflowers and vines and let them grow freely across the stones, we danced beneath the moonlight, celebrated anniversaries beneath its candlelit arches, and kissed beneath the stars.
And one day, we brought our son there.
He was a sweet but rambunctious boy, a spitting image of his father, with eyes that sparkled with mischief like mine. He had his father’s stubborn chin and my tendency to laugh at inappropriate times. The way he laughed and chased wonder, one never would have guessed the darkness that had once prevailed this land.
I stood at the edge of the field, skirts brushing the wildflowers that now grew in abundance as I watched them play. Castiel wielded a stick like a knight’s sword, crouching to match our toddler’s height. Our son—wildly uncoordinated yetdetermined—charged with a shriek of glee, swinging for Castiel’s knees.
Castiel dropped to the grass with dramatic flair, clutching his chest.
“A mortal wound!” he gasped. “Alas, the prince defeats the tyrant once more to save the princess.”
Our son squealed and clambered onto his chest in gleeful triumph. Castiel wrapped him in his arms, laughing as he rolled them both in the grass. I closed my eyes a reverent moment, basking in the joyous sound that once had been entirely absent from my stoic husband.
The sunlight caught in Castiel’s hair. For a moment, I saw not the boy I once feared, or the man I once mourned, or the crown prince of a realm reeling from ruin—but the man who had become my home, my everything, my once-in-a-lifetime finally made real.
He looked over and caught me watching.
That familiar spark bloomed in his expression, now warmer than it had ever been in those haunted days. He whispered something to our son, who nodded solemnly and immediately sprinted off in another direction—probably to battle a butterfly or declare war on a squirrel.
Castiel rose from the grass and walked towards me, my favorite crooked smile already forming.
He didn’t have to say anything, not when a single look was enough for me to feel the depth of his affection, igniting the love that filled my own heart. Just as I had in every life before this one. But this time, there was no war behind it, no curse or ticking clock.
Just us.
He reached me and brushed a strand of hair from my cheek, his fingers lingering as if he still couldn’t quite believe I was real.
“Careful,” I teased. “Our little chaperone could come back at any moment.”
“Our son is off chasing a dragon,” he said, nodding toward the young prince’s latest quest. “I think I have time to steal a moment for a quest of my own.” His mischievous gaze lingered purposefully on my lips.
I met his kiss, soft and sure—the kind that belonged wholly to this life and love, to the quiet miracle of beginning again…and the future we had shaped with our own hands.
And in that kiss, time stood still.
