"Your Majesties."
The Pandreian territory's Regent bowed elegantly as he saw Kel and Calix to their carriage.
He hardly resembled the unconfident boy who had been sitting frequently across the table from the Emperor in endless meetings.
If nothing else, Kel thought to herself, Taegus certainly puts on a convincing act.
Soon after the Regent had bid his farewell, the carriage began to rumble down the road away from the great, sand-colored palace. More than a dozen soldiers traversed in front while countless others trailed behind the royal carriage.
Inside, Kel sat fidgeting, unable to sit still in her seat.
"Are you having a hard time saying goodbye?" Calix questioned from the seat across. "To the place you had longed for?"
"Honestly…" Kel turned to look out the window at the buildings and palm trees slowly rolling past.
Halseva, the city by the sea, had once been the place of her dreams. She thought, when she was a stand-in on the way to fulfill a political marriage, that she'd never want to leave once she'd tasted the salty seaside breeze.
But she hadn't given a second thought to bidding that place farewell.
In a sense, the ease, itself, of leaving the ocean behind was hard. It was a painful reminder that she'd lost another piece of herself--that frenzied excitement that she'd finally get to see the wondrous southern kingdom but at the cost of possibly never seeing her friends again.
Now, she was hardly worried about those same friends who were currently across the ocean, living some other life on some other continent. And the wondrous southern kingdom had turned out to hold less magic than she thought it would.
But she felt little more than a small pang for that lost piece.
The North now was what filled her mind with dreams and thrilling imaginings. For all the pieces of herself she'd lost, she would be able to gain new ones.
Her family.
The truth about her mysterious fire powers.
And the piece that she'd most recently gained, Calix, would be by her side.
"Honestly," she repeated, turning to smile at Calix, "it's not as hard as I thought to say goodbye to Pandreia."
Kel and Calix spent more than a week traveling with the caravan. Progress was painfully slow, and Kel's impatience grew worse every day.
"Don't you think we're going too far west?" she pouted one evening.
Calix paused, still holding up the flap of the tent they were sharing for the night.
He stared at her for a second before letting out a sigh and allowing the flap to drop closed behind him.
"We have to go west anyway," he chuckled, seating himself next to her.
"Northwest!" Kel corrected him.
"Yes, yes. Northwest." Calix was making little effort to hide his amusement at her anxiety.
He went on to list all the many things that needed to be prepared, the prime location for splitting away from the caravan, and the travel schedule.
The man had taken to constantly listing things that way ever since the night Kel expressed her annoyance at being left out.
"Ah, but I suppose if you become pregnant then we'll have to adjust the schedule to include more breaks," Calix nodded thoughtfully to himself.
"Pregnant?" Kel's mouth gaped. "You don't.. I-I'm only eighteen!"
The Emperor tilted his head in confusion.
"That's plenty old enough to carry a child, and given how often we-"
"Stop! Stop right there!"
Kel pressed her palm into her forehead.
"You.. aren't seriously considering having children right now, are you?"
"I'm just taking into account the possibility," Calix shrugged.
Kel peered at him from under her hand.
"I never thought of you as someone who would have any interest in children," she pointed out.
Not to mention the fact that she, herself, had hardly given a thought to their marriage, let alone what would come after that.
"I've never had any interest in them," Calix frowned as he spoke.
Kel could almost see the images of snot-nosed, noisy children running through his mind.
"But," he looked back up at her, "when I think of your child…"
He trailed off, his frown turning into a soft, lovely smile--the kind that rarely graced his lips.
"It gives me a little more understanding why Itzae took in so many brats."
What may have been a tender moment between the two shattered with Kel's giggles.
"Who are you calling a brat?" she teased. "Me or you?"
"Both of us," Calix smirked. "And that Dashien fellow."
Kel's smile dropped a little as she began to think about her life with Itzae and Dash.
"What do you think would have happened to us if Itzae never took us in?" she wondered. "Would we have even met?"
"I would have found you."
Calix answered immediately without pausing to consider her question.
"Even without his help."
Kel couldn't help but laugh again.
For all the times Calix was uselessly logical, there were also times like this where he threw all rationality out the window.
Of course they never would have met each other if Itzae hadn't played the role he did.
But the Dragon Emperor couldn't accept the idea of a reality where he didn't have his pretty golden bird by his side.
The irrational answer was strangely endearing to Kel, who was usually repulsed by the man's possessive tendencies. She was beginning to understand that his desire to hold on to her didn't stem from a dark place.
He was just used to getting exactly what he wanted--whether it be the upperhand in a negotiation or the entire continent. And as a man in love, he had found something he wanted more desperately than anything ever before.
Even if he was awful at expressing those feelings.
Not that Kel could criticize him. It had taken her far too long to understand that she reciprocated the man's feelings after all.
"Soon," Calix murmured, turning to look out the window.
"We will be on our way soon."
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