Page 56 of The Only King to Claim Her

“I was only thinking of my father,” she said softly. “It is not so much that I need a man to give me away. I do not. It is that a father cares for his children. For his daughter. And when he gives her to a man, he is giving her to a man he believes will care for her, if all is well. My father died in fear of the safety of his children. I am safe. I wish he could see. I wish that he could have given me to you, rather than seeing me stolen away by the men who then killed him. Though perhaps in his last moments it was not his concern.”

“The ones you love are always your concern,” Maximus said.

There was a flower pinned to the lapel of his suit jacket, and he snapped it off then. Then he placed it down on the stone wall right beside the entry to the church. “For your father.”

Tears filled her eyes and she broke a blossom off the top of her bouquet, then another. And she set them beside the first. “My mother and Marcus.”

“Do you know,” he said. “I never was a big believer in the afterlife. And spirits. And living on. But I know that it is Stella who guides me sometimes. My memory of her, her spirit, whichever you like to call it. They see you.”

She closed her eyes and nodded slowly. “Thank you.”

Maximus looked to the flowers. “I will keep her safe. I swear it with my life. If you were here, you would approve this match. You would know that I was sincere. That when I make vows I keep them. And I make this a vow. Annick will come to no harm as long as I am here. I would give my life for hers.”

Annick shivered. But she couldn’t speak.

“Shall we go in?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

He took her arm, and he led her up the aisle, as he had done for the coronation. The priest was there waiting, just as he had been then too, but Maximus stood with her. And these vows were not to the country, but to each other. The traditional vows always spoken at weddings in Aillette.

“The world is full of hard places,” she said slowly, reading from the paper she held in her hands. “But I will be soft for you. The world is full of uncertainty, but I will be constant. The world is out there, and we are here. And in my heart, you have become the world.”

When Maximus spoke, his rich voice filled the room, vibrated with her soul.

“The world is filled with danger, and I will be your strength. Your weapon. Your sword and your shield. I will be your guard. I will be your warrior. I will protect you and preserve you, for my life is yours. And my world is here.”

She was not supposed to believe it. It was not supposed to matter. Not quite to the degree that it did. But oh, how she wished she could. How she wished she could freeze all of this and hold it to her chest.

And when they were introduced as the sovereign rulers of Aillette, King Maximus and Queen Annick, she felt the strangest sense of wholeness. Of unity. She looked at him, and she looked out in the crowd, at the King family watching them, clapping for them. Applauding as if this was a common American affair.

And she felt...part of something. Part of a family. And Maximus had even included her parents. Had spoken vows to their spirits. And suddenly she didn’t feel so alone. And it was that hope inside of her that frightened her the most. That need.

Oh, how could she have ever talked herself into believing she did not love him? This beautiful, broken man who she had spirited away with the aid of chloroform, but who had turned the power around when he demanded marriage. This man who was trying to right wrongs that simply could not be fixed. This man made from lies and vengeance and a deep, unending love for another woman.

She loved him.

She did. There was nothing to be done for it. Nothing that could make it go away. And she didn’t even want it to. Because last night she had revisited that dungeon, and it was isolation. The bars were gone, and Maximus was there instead. Though he might be his own kind of prison. Yes, loving him might be its own kind of hell.

They were swept off to the reception. A large white tent lay out on the lawn. And she had never felt quite so broken or quite so happy in all of her life.

Her people were here, eating and smiling and free. It all made sense then. How she could live for them and herself. How those two things were not at odds. How she could love Maximus with deep ferocity and love them as well. How she could love him and expect nothing in return, but also want it desperately. How she could wish to devote herself to this country, but also wish to be a wife, and a mother to whatever children they had. Children who would also be both property of the country, and property of themselves. It was a difficult life, this. And one thing she was certain of when she stood there watching it all was that it took more courage and more love, and not less. You could not lead if you did not contain all these things. Not well. Not right.

And so it might be dangerous. To care like this. But if she did not, if she held back, if she tried to protect herself, then it would be like living in a dungeon. For then, in that life, she had held back everything that she believed, everything that she felt, simply because she had to protect herself. That had been a matter of life and death, but this was not. She could not hold back these feelings. To do so would make her a lesser Queen. To do so would make her less than Maximus deserved.

He had believed in love at one time. And all that he thought about the world had been destroyed. Cruelly. Could she not give him a piece of it back? She wanted to. Oh, how she desperately wanted to. For her Maximus King. Her King. Her husband.

Her love.

And she somehow knew innately that after today he would try to resist her. Because of course he would. It was the way of him. He drew close, and then away. What was he afraid of?

Feeling. She knew.

He was adamant that he had no heart left, but everything she had seen of him suggested otherwise.

The way that he stayed with his family, even with the issues he had with his father... No, he was not a man with no heart. Not a man with no soul.

He was a man with so much love to give, so br

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