“You don’t like roses. You prefer wildflowers.” His mouth lifted in a smile, and then that faded. “I should have moved this extra chair in from the very first night I came back here. I love you, Beth, and you’ve more than earned the right to be ruling with me. It’s what you’ve been doing all along.”
Laughing in a short burst, she could only shake her head. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Well, how does it make you feel?” he murmured. “Knowing that everything you’ve done matters so much to so many. Matters to me.”
There was a long silence, and she felt like the years of mourning melted away, as if they had never been, the pain not just erased but cleansed out of her.
Reaching up to his wraparounds, she took his sunglasses off and stared into his beautiful, blind eyes. With a trembling hand, she brushed under each one.
“Seen,” she replied hoarsely as she leaned in to kiss him. “It makes me feel…seen.”
As their mouths met, he whispered, “Happy Anniversary,leelan.”
Oh, God. How many years had she yearned to hear those words.
There was another discreet knock, and as Wrath beckoned, Saxton leaned back in. “Are you ready for the first audience of the evening?”
“I thought you canceled the schedule,” she said with confusion as V and Rhage came in from the other door.
“We have three hours. I sent Fritz for the lambies and figured we’d start as we mean to go on. Are you ready?”
She mopped herself up and kissed him again. “Yes, I am.”
With that, the great Blind King smiled in the secret way he did only with her. Just like the photograph in that album in the attic…just like in all the daydreams and fantasies she had tortured herself with for those thirty-three years, nine months, three days, and nine hours they’d been apart.
“Good,” he said. He turned in Saxton’s direction. “My Queen and I will seeourcitizens now…”
The End
