They deserve it all.

Chapter 55

"Alright! Tomorrow is the day!" I take my fork and jump to the fruit so very similar to strawberries, yet they couldn't be more different. I take one and pop it in my mouth and enjoying the taste before it's gone and I'm grabbing another one.

"Yeah." Alistair says, sitting right opposite of me.

"What?" I ask him, deceptive of his monotone, emotionless tone. "Not happy we'll finally get to rule?" He sighs and I roll my eyes as he does. "Way to ruin the vibe, man."

"What vibe?!" He returns to me in a snappy manner. "The only thing happening tomorrow is you going to be busy all day, while I'll be alone."

"No." I say shaking my head. "You won't be."

"You'll be here at breakfast and dinner, if I'm lucky you'll make lunch too, but that's about it. Then, at night, I'll be asleep when you return or you won't return at all."

I stand up and walk the way over to him. And I scrape out the chair that stands on the other sides of the table and I sit down. "I promise you, Alistair, that every single night I'll sleep next to you. No matter what is happening, I'll come to bed and I'll lay with you and we can talk."

"... You promise?"

"Even better, I pinky promise."

I offer him my pinky and after looking at me with narrowed eyes and a jaw clamped shut in which I can see his muscles jump whenever his eyes narrowed a bit more. Until he parts his lips and sighs and gives me his pinky.

"Ugh ... I feel like a baby. It's horrible, you make me feel horrible. You're horrible."

I ruffle his hair before taking out a new plate and staying right next to him.

"You are a horrible baby, but, you're my horrible baby."

He doesn't move, instead he looks at me with utter disgust and we just stare for a while until he lets out a breath that sounds like an 'ew'.

"Don't worry though, it's not going to be like your parents marriage, or mine. We'll stay together. In this world where there are so many evil people, it's best to keep together with those who you can trust."

He shakes his head. "It's not that I don't believe you, or trust you. It's just, during our wedding planning and all of it, you would be absent for days upon days, even your Person didn't know where you were. And then you'd show up again once in that while with your troubled face and all that. I don't know what happened all those times, but you can't do that. Not since we're married. You can't just disappear. You can't."

In that moment I simply said to him that I won't, I was feeling too confident and excited for my first day as Queen tomorrow with such anticipation that everything would be fine and that my life was now perfect that I didn't even let myself think about the bad stuff. But Willow ... ha ... Willow, no, she couldn't let me, she wouldn't. How dare I genuinely be happy for once without her, with someone else, how dare I?

You will—

"Let's eat, okay?"

"Yes."

You will feel a little sad one day, and then you'll go to your potions room, your hidden shifted potions room and you'll stay there, in the comfort of that sad pathetic corner, with your sad pathetic head buried in your sad pathetic knees.

"You know, I'm really excited for my first council meeting."

"Years of just watching our parents doing all of it, and now you'll stand there. At the head of the table, speaking out over all of them. And no one will dare to speak over you."