CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ITWASAbeautiful day for a wedding. Too bad she still felt so terribly sad. But her gown was sensational, and even though her heart was sore, she looked like she ought to.
It was only her feelings that were not quite where she hoped they would be.
She had thought a lot about those feelings. Love. Of course, it was natural that she wanted love. But that did not mean she was in love with him.
That would be the saddest thing of all. It was only that she was lonely. And when he held her, it felt like something special. It was good she had not let him hold her last night. His arms contained a kind of magic that made her feel happy, but also sadder all at once.
And now they would be married.
She walked down to the chapel all on her own. It was different than the day of the coronation, when she had had Maximus to escort her. She held the bouquet of flowers that had been provided for her and looked down at the blossoms. A curl of blond hair fell into her face as she did, and she felt a strange cracking sensation about her heart. Her father should have been here. He should have been here to give her away. To place her on the arm of Maximus King, a man who would care for her. She felt a presence behind her. And she turned. It was Maximus.
“Are you ready?”
“Aren’t you meant to be inside?”
“Probably. But I came to find you.”
Her heart nearly flew from her chest. He came to find her.
She remembered being in that dungeon room. Being in the dark. Seeing him.
Knowing somehow that he would be her salvation, but she had not known it would be this.
Even though she had been too afraid to do it at the time, she reached her hand out for him, and he took it.
He was here.
He had come to find her, just now.
He would be her husband and she... She was happy about that.
“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.