Page 164 of The Princesses of Ruin
Lily’s fingers tense on my back.
“I know,” she whispers.
So little time. We haveso little timeto train our warrior to fight a beast that neither of us could defeat, even together. It feels insurmountable.
“Please, wife,” I say, stroking my hand through her hair and loosening the knot of her bun. “I don’t know how hard it is, but I know you’re struggling. I know…”
I trail off from a conversation we’ve had a hundred times.
She misses her sister. She feels responsible for the plight of our daughter. She hates herself with every breath and there’s so little I can do to make it better.
“This is a fight that doesn’t end for twenty years. Twenty more years, Alastair.”
I nod. There’s nothing I can say.
Her voice warbles with tears. “And what if…she…she’s not strong enough?”
I hug her tighter, my demon arm pulling her so close I can feel her heartbeat through my chest.
“We can’t think like that. She will win. She will be strong enough.”
Lily sniffles and nods, but says nothing else.
I hold her for a while and imagine a world where I didn’t bring her home. Where I had succumbed to the demon’s wish and took her into the wilderness. Where I bathed her in hot springs and ate her pussy every day. Made her breakfast and built her a shelter she probably could’ve built better herself.
The vision is consumed in fire, the leaking, molten mess that was Scarlett’s magical essence. The thing that would spread and destroy the realm—if Iksah, Zane, and Reina hadn’t stopped it. It was fast thinking on Adrik’s part, to use the backup flask to open the realms again.
Was that the design all along?
“All right,” Lily says, pulling back from me. “When does the Cherry open?”
I smile, dragging my claws over her soft cheek. “We can go now, if you want.”
She half turns and looks at the notebook on the desk. “No good. I have to meet with the agricultural representatives soon, and then another meeting with the leadership board. This ‘three queens and four kings’ is really throwing things off for them,” she says with an impish smirk.
“I love to watch the bureaucracy scratch its head,” I say, though it’s probably the farthest thing from the truth I’ve ever said.
Her posture softens and she smiles at me like a woman in love. “What would I do without you?”
I kiss her tenderly. “You’d be the same, strong, beautiful woman that you are—desperately in need of a man who can tolerate your bad jokes.”
She smacks my arm. “My jokes aregood. Just you wait, I’m going to make a whole book of them.”
I grunt and nod.
“It’ll be published all throughout Fynren and the world! People will read them to each other over dinner and laugh so hard their stew comes back out their noses.”
I can’t help but laugh.
“You doubt me?” she asks, her voice tender, her heart exposed.
“No, my sweet wife. I’m inspired by you.” I kiss her head again. “Perhaps I will write some poetry.”
“Absolutely not.”
I huff. “Why?”
She grabs my cheeks in both hands and squeezes my face.
