“I promised you I always would,” I reminded her. “I always will.”
Cosima
For the first time in my life, I woke up in Alexander’s black and blue bedroom. My entire body ached from the neglectful abuse it had undergone for the past few weeks as Noel’s prisoner and the fury of the chase through the maze three days before while my mind was its own bruise, tenderized by the pounding relief and turmoil at having killed three humans in the span of two months. I felt fragile, almost brittle like something old and worn you needed to wear gloves to handle. I was only twenty-two years old, but I felt as if I’d lived a dozen lives, a hundred years of sorrow compacted into a little over two decades. I knew it would take a long time before I achieved any kind of normalcy or stability. My dragons had been slayed, my prince resurrected from the dead, but this princess bore scars that would never completely fade. They were battle wounds, badges of victory against the many monsters of my life, but they still ached, and I knew they would periodically, spasmodically in the years to come like an old injury flaring up in the damp British cold.
But at that moment of first waking, when my lids slowly parted and my eyes focused on the long golden slope of torso under my cheek, none of the pain existed. Instead, like the sun cresting beyond the navy velvet drapes, hope and cautious happiness dawned through my chest and warmed my body from fingers to toes.
I was in Alexander’s bedroom, pressed between his arms and legs like a flower eternalized in the pages of a book, sheltered from time and harm by the powerful folds of his body. He was safe and relatively unharmed, holding me like he never again intended to let me go, even in his slumber.
Pearl Hall was quiet outside the double doors, already stripped of servants loyal to the old Davenport ways and waiting for its new master and mistress to fill it with fresh souls. I imagined a lightly concussed Douglas in his kitchen, nattering with the few kitchen staff left while he worked puff pastry through his strong hands to make my favourite breakfast pastry, and Riddick in the gymnasium, already warming up for his morning fencing session with Xan and me.
It was the first morning of my new life, the last life I ever intended to live. This manor and this man were finally, irrevocably mine. I had always been theirs, stamped both metaphorically and literally with their possession, but it was the first time I could reciprocate that ownership and the headiness of tenure settled over me like a heavy crown.
The impossible dream I’d once dreamed of being Pearl Hall and Alexander’s mistress had come to fruition and not through sheer luck or the will of others, but through my brave actions and the relentless pursuit of my goals.
I’d earned this. Earned them.
There would never be any doubt in my mind or the minds of others who might have been inclined to dissent that I deserved to be Duchess of Greythorn, wife of the great Alexander Davenport, doyen of one of the most extensive, beautiful estate in England.
Alexander’s cool silken chest dampened under my cheek, and I realized I was crying. The sweet, cleansing release of tears I should have cried over the years but didn’t allow myself to because I feared it would show a weakness I would never overcome. I understood, as one of the tears slipped over Xan’s mounded pectoral and wound through the maze of his abdominals until it pooled in his belly button, that tears were not the sign of a weak woman.
They were the sign of a woman who was unafraid of her own powerful emotions, who was capable of harnessing that power to fuel her passionate ambitions.
It was exactly my deep well of emotionality that had given me the strength to continue loving Alexander against all odds, that had given me a small escape during the times of torture with Ashcroft and Noel, that had shielded me from and armed me for the battle I had just won.
Lying there in bed with Alexander, I didn’t just feel peaceful, I felt canonized. There would never be many people who knew the true story of Alexander and Cosima, not the way everyone knew the tale of Hades and Persephone, but both of us knew the truth.
Just like the goddess of spring, I had chosen to return to the underworld, not because I was coerced, but because I found in the darkness and beauty of that wild domain that I belonged there more than I ever had above ground.
Alexander stirred under me, his arm banding tighter over my hip, the other crossing over to stroke down my hair and tip up my chin so my face was exposed to his sleep-leaden gaze.