Page 8 of Unwavering
“Agreed.”
“I finally—“
“Happy anniversary, my own darling queen.”
“—got my hair the exact shade of red—what?”Oh, fuck.
In a panic, I sat up. “No,” I said, trying not to lose my shit. “No! Our anniversary is months,monthsaway.”
He reached out, caught my arm, pulled me in close for a snuggle. “Calm down,” he murmured into my (newly red) hair. “Your heart is hammering.”
“Yeah, sure, it’s probably pounding away at ten beats a minute. Listen, I didn’t forget our anniversary.” For one, Tina would have never let that happen. I’d had to actively prevent her from buying a gift for him, ostensibly from me (“I only wish to lighten your burdens, Majesty.”) more than once. “I think—I think you’re a little mixed up.” Or senile. Hewasover a hundred years old.
“No,” he murmured, stroking my (newly red) hair. “Not the meaningless government ritual you insisted we practice. Our first wedding, our true wedding.”
I wriggled until my kissable hair was out of his reach. “True wedding? Dude, if you’re getting me mixed up with some floozy you hooked up with during the Great Depression...”
“You know you’re the only floozy for me, dearest.”
“That’s a relief.” I was too sated to give him a well-deserved pinch for turning floozy back on me. “So then, what...?”
“The pool. The fight. The Fiends. The ignoble end of a tyrant, the start of our glorious reign.”
I mulled over “ignoble” (and tried not to giggle at “glorious”, because he sounded like a Russian propaganda poster) and then I had it: he meant the swimming pool “wedding” that took place within days of our first meeting. How could I have forgotten?
Serious question. How could I? I saved Sinclair’s life that night. I cured his fatal burns. We killed the bad guy and then fucked, naked and upside down, in the deep end of a random swimming pool. When we came up for the air we didn’t need, we were—hey, presto!—the new king and queen of the undead. Such were the rules of undead matrimony and monarchy.
(Hey, it’s no weirder or inconvenient than a destination wedding.)
“We belonged to each other from that moment.”
I snorted. “Which was awkward, since I hated you back then.”
“No,” he said smugly, and that time hedidget a pinch. “And your hair is lovely. But you must know I wouldn’t care what color or length your follicles were.”
“Ooh, I love your sexy follicle pillow talk.”
“The we are well matched for that if nothing else. And we have some time left. We—oh.”
Yeah, I heard it, too. Now that we weren’t focused on getting laid, we were a little more aware of the world around us. There were at least two sets of footsteps coming down the hall, followed (natch) by a knock on our door.
“Betsy? It’s Mom. BabyJon caught some kind of bug, the poor thing just barfed all over his car seat.”
Offer her a heating pad.
Oh, very funny. It could have been worse. She could have knocked ten minutes ago and I would have had to beat her to death.
“I wouldn’t be bothering you—“
“Of course you should bother me, Mom,” I called, hunting for clean clothing that wasn’t shredded. “He’s my brother/son.”
“—but Marc and Will were adamant that you would want to be notified at once. And Tina and Jessica backed them up.”
“Because of course they did,” I muttered. “I’ll be right down.”
Sinclair was still lolling on the bed; he looked like a Roman general, post-orgy. “’Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’”
“Not so fast, co-monarch, your head’s uneasy, too. He’s your brother-in-law/stepson. C’mon, give me a hand.”
