We took several steps before I felt his lips on my hair where he kissed me.

After that, he again looked forward, but I kept my head to his shoulder, and my husband and I walked silently under the moonlight with nature’s most beautiful melody of waves lapping the shore serenading us the rest of the way to the camp.

49

The Breakfast

Prince True

Fifty Miles Inside the Southern Border

WODELL

“This is ridiculous. An unacceptable delay,” King Gallienus announced pompously as all sat around the large dining table that Mars’s servants took apart to travel and put back together for them to use when they made camp of an evening.

As well as a morning.

Even a chilly morning.

The sun was bright above them.

But everyone had a rug draped over their chair to ward off the chill of the wood and six barrels of fire danced around the table to give a modicum of heat, not to mention all the women wore cloaks and the men mantles.

Except Mars, who appeared immune to cold which gave new meaning to the ancient title his ancestors bore.

The Fire King.

“This wedding nonsense needs to just be done,” Gallienus concluded.

True had presently finished explaining what he’d woken early to tell his mother and father.

Something his mother was delighted about, for he had been correct, it gave her more time to build a bigger spectacle.

Something his father didn’t seem to care much about.

Then again, True had known the man for thirty-one years, perhaps twenty-six of those when he was somewhat fully cogent, and he had no idea what his father cared about.

Now all at the table knew that he and Farah were off to explore Wodell and they would meet the others in Notting Thicket a month hence.

Farah, sitting at his side, shifted, and he turned his head to her to see she looked uncomfortable.

Therefore, he reached a hand to hers, and when her fingers curled around his, he brought them to the arm of his chair and held on.

“I think it’s a magnificent idea,” Lord Johan, Silence’s father, declared. “This means my Silence can come home. To Bower Manor. And there she can spend time amongst the dells she loves so, before she has to go back to all that sand.”

“My Silence,” Mars corrected low.

Farah made a discreet noise of alarm.

“And we won’t be going to Bower Manor,” Mars finished, only for Silence, who sat next to her husband in the manner she often sat in the times True had seen her around her father, or really anybody, except True.

Silently.

She had been much more animated in Firenze.

She was retreating into herself again.

And Mars wasn’t helping.

In fact, True worried Mars being Mars and not guiding her to an understanding of who he was and why he was that way was the reason she was doing it.