Page 162 of One True Love (Love Mark 1)

Epilogue

Urban

Five Months Later

The castle’s chapel was full again.

But this time, the marriage was not for my sister or even for an arranged union. This time, it was for me. And I was finally being united with my one true love in holy matrimony.

The good king Brentley had pardoned Vienne from her spousal mourning period of a year since her first husband had turned out to be a traitor to the throne. So, we decided to have the ceremony as soon as we had the kingdom put to rights again.

Which had taken too fucking long, if you wanted my opinion.

Honestly.

Far Shore hadn’t readily agreed to believe that Soren had been the sole culprit behind their raised clear rock tariffs. They were still bent out of shape over the fact that Donnelly had chosen High Cliff for an alliance, not them. And they were particularly enraged when their only prince, Murdock, ended up dead. They wanted to make us hurt. Badly.

So, after receiving word that they’d sent out another round of troops to fight us for annihilating their first wave of men—three times the amount they’d sent the first time—we were forced to prepare for yet another war.

I’m not gonna lie; we experienced massive amounts of panic when we learned another army was headed our way, no matter how archaic and outdated their weaponry and war gear was. I quite frankly shat my pants.

Metaphorically, of course.

Their first attack had taken out twenty percent of our men, and the remaining eighty were exhausted and wounded. We didn’t have the time to recuperate before this fresh, new army arrived within days. We’d sent word to my father for backup, sure—that’s why Donnelly had aligned themselves with High Cliff, after all—but it would’ve taken High Cliff soldiers a good three weeks to arrive.

We basically had little chance of survival in this until Vienne’s grandfather came up with the idea to use Elliott.

Despite the fact that the dragon had been hidden inside a sand cave for nearly sixty years to avoid this very fate, Mandalay insisted he enter the battle.

“He’s at the end of his life,” the old man explained. “He will enjoy getting out from under the mountain for some fresh air. And besides, no one will think to bring anything to fight off a dragon attack, since they believe they’re all extinct. This will win us the war in minutes and intimidate every other kingdom out there into thinking first before they decide to strike at us. By the time any of them grow the audacity to attack, we’ll have built up our army enough to handle them without Elliott, as he’ll probably be gone by then, anyway. So whatever weapons they create to hurt him will be pointless. And we’ll have moved on to creating brick and our subpar dragonless glass to support our commerce with other realms. So, honestly, there’s no reason not to use him.”

The old man argued a good point.

Thus, it was decided.

We let Elliott fly free in the sky. In a matter of minutes, he charred everyone in the approaching Far Shore army who’d been on the road to attack us, and we didn’t use a single soldier against them.

Elliott died peacefully, above ground, three weeks later. I think Vienne mourned him the most, and not just because she never got to live out her dragon sex dream; she simply missed her old friend.

Since then, Brentley had be

en working with the ruler of Far Shore to come to a peace agreement. The two kingdoms were back to trading with each other—they adored our new brick commodity about as much as they had our clear rock—but things were anything but friendly between us. I feared we hadn’t seen the last of Far Shore’s anger.

In other news, King Brentley had also dropped the magic ban in Donnelly, which proved useful since the magic ward Nanny Wynter had placed around the village and castle had stopped working since she’d gone missing. People of magic were once again allowed within the borders, and a High Cliff priestess was actually present in the chapel this very moment to bless my union with Vienne. Both Brentley and Allera had visited her the moment she’d arrived in Donnelly and were currently sporting the new tattoos she’d given them to prove it.

The glances those two goofballs kept sending each other was so sickly sweet I had to roll my eyes and turn away, only to spot Nicolette standing in a doorway not far away, holding a babbling, bouncing Anniston on her hip as she solemnly watched the guests gather.

Seeing her made me sigh. Nicolette had been out of her mind with worry when we’d sent Elliott out to take care of Far Shore. She was sure her one true love would be among them and perish. But when her mark stayed in place after the battle, she’d been much more reassured. I could tell, however, that a restlessness had grown in her.

I couldn’t blame her. If I could sense my one true love out there and knew which way to go to find him, as Nicolette did, I’d have left long ago. I knew she wanted to go. And even though she kept promising me she wouldn’t leave on her own or without a goodbye, I feared one day she’d simply vanish, having decided to race after him.

Vienne thought she’d go when she was ready and that when she did, we should let her. I supposed she had a point—it was Nicolette’s journey to take, not ours—but I still worried about the princess. She’d become a sister to me. I didn’t want to see her hurt.

Wandering toward her, I nodded when her gaze met mine.

“I believe you’re going to have more guests today than Brentley and Allera did for their wedding,” she said.

I shrugged. “Possibly. Vienne is quite adored by her people.”

---