Chapter 117 Late birthday gift
She was in the middle of a chapter when someone knocked on her door.
“Come in,” she said, without looking up.
The door opened and she heard footsteps cross the room and when she finally looked up from the page it was Azrael standing there, which was not who she had been expecting.
She closed the book and set it on the side table and waited to see what he had come to say.
He sat down in the chair across from her and was quiet for a moment, and then he asked her how she had been.
She looked at him.
“How I’ve been?”
“Yes,” he said. “How have you been.”
It was such a simple question and such an unexpected one that she didn’t know what to do with it for a second.
Nobody had asked her that since she arrived in this palace, not once.
There had been prophecies and declarations and arguments and grief and politics, and through all of it not a single person had sat across from her and asked how she was doing as a person, not as a Seraph or a bride candidate or a threat or a solution, just as herself.
“I’ve been managing,” she said honestly.
“Do you miss home?”
She looked at him for a moment.
“Every day,” she said. “Not the palace or the title or any of that. Just the ordinary things. Walking through the market in the morning. Knowing the names of the people around me. Having a life that was mine and made sense to me.”
She paused.
“Sera made it easier. She made everything feel less strange just by being here, and now she’s not here.”
Azrael listened without interrupting, which she appreciated more than she could say.
They talked for a while, really talked, the kind of conversation that had nothing to do with the binding or the succession or anything that had been consuming the palace for weeks.
He asked her about growing up, about what her life had looked like before Malachi came and took her away from it, and she found herself telling him things she hadn’t told anyone since arriving, small things, the way her kingdom smelled in the morning, the coronation dress that had been made for her that she would never wear now, the particular view from her bedroom window that she still thought about sometimes when she couldn’t sleep.
At some point he asked her if she had ever liked anyone. Back home, before all of this.
She laughed a little, which surprised her.
“Once,” she said. “When I was young, maybe fourteen, there was a prince from the neighbouring kingdom. He used to come to our court with his father for the seasonal meetings and I thought he was wonderful.”
She shook her head.
“Turned out he was terrible. Arrogant and unkind and the kind of person who was only charming when he wanted something. After that I didn’t really have the time or the interest. There was too much to learn, too much to prepare for, and then Malachi came and here I am.”
She looked at him when she finished.
“Your turn.”
He smiled at that, small and genuine.
“Another time.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No,” he agreed pleasantly. “It isn’t.”
She shook her head but she was smiling too, and the room felt easy in a way it hadn’t felt between them in a very long time.
Then she looked at him properly and said,
“Why are you here, Azrael? Not that I mind. But you didn’t come here to ask me about princes from neighbouring kingdoms.”
He reached into the inner pocket of his robe and produced a small box.
Dark wood, simple, with a silver clasp on the front.
He held it out across the space between them.
“I didn’t get you anything on your birthday,” he said. “That wasn’t acceptable to me. So I sent word to the finest craftsman in my kingdom and told him to make something worthy of the occasion.”
He paused.
“It arrived this evening.”
She took the box from him and opened it.
The necklace was gold, fine and elegant, the chain delicate without being fragile, and at the center of it a pendant with small diamonds set into the metal that caught the lamplight and held it like they had been waiting for exactly this moment.
Her name was engraved along the pendant in lettering so precise and so beautiful that she traced it with her fingertip before she could stop herself.
She looked up at him and found him watching her with an expression she didn’t have a name for but that made her chest feel full in a way she hadn’t expected.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“It compliments your hair,” he said simply.
He stood up and gestured for her to stand, and she did, and he took the necklace carefully from the box and she turned around and lifted her hair away from her neck without being asked.
She felt his hands behind her, steady and careful, the chain cool as it settled against her collarbone, his fingers working the clasp at the back of her neck with patience.
The clasp closed.
She turned around to face him and looked down at the pendant resting at her throat, the diamonds catching the light, her name in the gold.
He was still close from fastening it, and when she looked up he was looking at her, and neither of them moved for a moment.
He reached out and took her hand.
It was a quiet thing, unhurried, his fingers closing around hers, and she looked at their hands and then up at his face, and the distance between them was very small.
He lifted his other hand and touched her face, his thumb tracing along her cheekbone slowly, like he was making sure she was real, and she let him, standing still under his hands with her heart doing something she wasn’t going to name out loud.
He leaned in and she didn’t move away.
The kiss was gentle at first, careful, the kind of kiss that asked a question before it assumed an answer.
His lips were warm and he kissed her like he had all the time in the world, one hand still holding hers and the other cradling her face, and she felt something loosen in her chest that had been held tight for a very long time.
She kissed him back.
Her free hand found the front of his robe and held it, not pulling him closer, just holding on, and he made a quiet sound against her mouth and the kiss deepened, slower and warmer, and the room around them went very still the way rooms did when everything important was happening in one small corner of them.
When they finally separated they were much closer than they had been before and his forehead came to rest against hers, both of them breathing a little differently than they had been a minute ago.
She looked up at him.
He looked back at her.
Nobody said anything, and nobody moved apart, and the lamp burned low between them and the night stretched out long and quiet around the palace, and eventually he brought her hand up and pressed his lips to her knuckles once, soft and deliberate, and led her toward the room’s interior, and she followed without hesitation.