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“Unless the bride is a foul-tempered harpy.”
“Had you crawled out from under my bed when I was a child, I would have bludgeoned you to death with my father’s mace.”
“Thank you for not lying about what you thought of my appearance. You might have a face to turn my hair white, but your honesty is handsome.”
Theirs was an agreement based on the beginnings of friendship, respect and an intuitive understanding of each other that still left him slack-jawed with amazement. He refused to taint that accord by inviting vulgar conjecture.
“Loneliness is an empty void. We look for that friend in the light.” His glowing eyes squinted a little, deepening the laugh lines at their corners. “Or in the case of humans, in the dark.”
“Will you be that for me, Ildiko,” he said. “That beacon in the void?”
“The void is vast, like the sea at night and no land in sight. I’ll be the beacon, Brishen.”
“The chamber next door is mine. You’re welcome to explore it.” He winked at her. “Much to my family’s disgust, I’m a man of few secrets.”
He suffered the sudden, uncomfortable sensation of sitting between two large cats, both protracting and retracting their claws as they faced off against each other.
“Sleep here each day, Ildiko.” A sweet warmth suffused her. She entangled her legs with his and hugged his arm to her waist. “As you wish. Just don’t steal the blankets.”
“I’m not human, wife,” he whispered into the darkness. Shock rounded his eyes at Ildiko’s response, slurred with sleep and nearly incoherent. “But you’re still mine, husband.”
“My beautiful husband.” she said. “I see radiance.”
She hadn’t chosen this husband of hers, nor had he chosen her, but fate or kind gods had brought them together, made them friends and then lovers. While her Gauri peers might shudder at the idea of a Kai mate and give thanks they weren’t her, Ildiko considered herself the most fortunate of women.
Ildiko embraced her lover, her husband, her best friend and counted herself a most blessed wife.
“Woman of day,” he said slowly. “You mean everything to me.” No amount of blinking this time held back Ildiko’s tears. They streamed down her cheeks to drip off her chin and onto Brishen’s shoulder. “Prince of night,” she said in a watery voice that echoed another moment when she’d greeted him with the same words. “You’ve come back to me.”
She made him strong; she made him weak, and in that moment, she nearly put him on his knees.
