God of Loyalty by J A Armitage & Emma Savant

Author:J A Armitage & Emma Savant
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Enchanted Quill Press
Published: 2020-04-15T04:00:00+00:00

Reed nudged me. I’d asked him to be my impromptu best man, and while he’d been utterly bewildered at the news that I was about to marry the princess, he’d agreed and was now right at my side.

“The lilies are taken care of,” he said. “Being in the shed didn’t seem to hurt them any. Glad you hid a few from the duke.”

“I’m just glad they survived.” I stretched my arms, trying to relieve the nervous tension building in my neck and shoulders. At least, the suit the palace had provided me with actually fit today.

“A couple of dark days isn’t enough to kill anything,” Reed said. “Least of all, a lily that makes it own light.”

“Sir?” someone said.

It took me a moment and another nudge from Reed to realize the assistant had been talking to me. He bowed and gestured toward the door.

“It’s time to take your place.”

I took a deep breath, and Reed and I walked into the throne room. All the guests from yesterday were there, dressed again in their wedding finery, but now, Hedley and Hyacinth sat in the place of pride on the front row, next to where the king and queen would sit when they arrived. Hyacinth smoothed her hair and beamed at me, and Hedley gave me a slow grin.

Music floated through the air, and the doors at the back of the room opened. Flower girls entered, but they didn’t carry baskets of petals. Instead, each little girl carried one of my Gilded Lilies in a silver pot. The flowers’ petals had just opened for the day, and each blossom cast rays of dancing golden light onto the girls’ faces. People gasped and murmured as they walked up the aisle.

When they arrived at the front of the room, the girls placed the lilies on small marble pedestals that surrounded the altar in a crescent shape. The littlest girl, one of Queen Rapunzel’s ladies’ children, stumbled as she tried to lift the pot. I darted forward and steadied her, and together, her chubby hands next to mine, we set the lily on its stand.

The little girl grinned up at me and ran to her mother, who was waiting in one of the front rows.

Lilian’s ladies-in-waiting came next, each one in a beautiful gown of pink and gold.

And then, as the music changed to the swelling tones of the Tulip March, Lilian appeared at the end of the aisle.

I had seen her in her gown yesterday. I knew the way her shoulders floated above its loose sleeves. I had already witnessed the lines of the bodice skimming her beautiful curves. There was nothing new about the gossamer veil that covered her face or her golden necklace with its glass heart resting between her collarbones, or the shimmering slippers that peeked out from the hem of her voluminous skirt.

I had seen it all before, and still, she took my breath away.

She grinned at me, and it was nothing like the fixed smile that had graced her features before.

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