You call this fate?

Chapter 49

We gave it two months. There was no reason to hurry now I knew that this was going to happen. My fragile mind could bear a few more days, it seemed.

The others were ecstatic about the news, of course, more so than I had thought possible. On hearing, Hannah dropped to the floor, her back to the wall, and buried her face in her hands; Ella screamed at everyone “I told you so!” before succumbing to a fountain of tears as she crumbled on the couch; Tasha gave me a bear hug that might or might not have cracked a rib, then threw herself on Alexander and kissed the poor green-faced man on the mouth. When Chris finally managed to pull her off his brother he thumped the other man on the back and dragged his girlfriend away before she could do worse.

“I don’t know what to say,” Clara said—that being exactly what she did. She didn’t say a word, not trusting herself to, apparently, content with touching my face from time to time with tears in her eyes.

Granny Tonks flittered around like a fat and gross butterfly, laughing in everyone’s face and asking me if this huge moment of celebration didn’t warrant I give her the hard stuff she knew I was hiding. I ignored her request and pretended to show a great deal interest in the vomit Ella had just produced—having stuffed her face with all the sugary items she could find in the kitchen.

I wouldn’t have given my life for the Queen’s.

Tasha and Clara took over the moment this idea was proposed, telling any who might here, in quite explicit terms, that they did not need my help in any way imaginable. And that was that. My job was nothing more than to sit and watch my fairy tale come to its justifiable conclusion.

Alex and I talked, every moment we could, every chance there was a moment to breath. I told him more about my family, about my country. He told me as much as he could about his past, about the days before Jeremiah Rodwell had plucked a little boy off the streets and made a man of him. We never mentioned his sister, or the men he had killed. He knew that I knew; I never tried to hide it. He had no intention of not telling me either. A time would come for that too. A time would come for everything. And at that time I would be there, and I would listen to everything he had to say.

But that time was not now.

It was the time of my happiness. Of my happily ever after. I was going to get married. To be a bride. And I was getting married to the man I loved. His past didn’t matter and neither did mine. Our yesterdays had made us who we were, and we had fallen in love in the present, taking into account what the other had become. Nothing else mattered.

I was in the highest of heavens. I was jubilant, euphoric.

My wedding day was going to be the happiest day of my life.

And I suppose it was…just not in the way I had hoped it would be.

***

I was sitting in front of the mirror in my pink wedding dress.

The colour had been chosen at my insistence, a mixture of white and red—the colours expected on brides both here and back home. Delicate silver thread spread in twisting flowers across the whole expanse of the sheer chiffon, reinforced underneath by the softest of silks. The denser cloth ascended only till my chest, in the fashion of a sleeveless gown.

The embroidery started in an explosion at the hem, where it was so compact the pink was almost non-existent, then climbed up with its thickness gradually reducing. By the time it reached my shoulder blades there was no embroidery at all, only the diaphanous cloth stretching up to my neck and wrapping in long fitted sleeves down my arms.

A fragile tiara, on loan from Clara, sat among the curls topped over my head, over which lay a soft pink scarf wrapped, again, to leave my neck and ears exposed. Thin silver earrings hung from said ears, my only jewellery beside the tiara and wedding ring. Tasha had kept a light hand when it came to makeup, satisfied with smoky eyes, just a faint whisper of blush, and nude lipstick.