She would never have traded him for anything, nor for anyone else in this world, for there was no flickering tallow candle that could ever hope to supplant the sun.

She ran her fingers through his thick black hair, leaning down to bite fiercely at the nape of his neck, making a rag of her husband’s flesh to muffle her rising moans as his heavy chest clashed rhythmically against hers.

Her teeth bit hard and she let out one last, ragged cry as she allowed herself to be completely taken by the storm, her fingernails digging deep into her husband’s back hard enough that she knew he would playfully complain of the pain come morning with bloody scars joining the others.

He did not last much longer either, his breath catching before they finally disentangled themselves, allowing their weary, sweat-sheened bodies to sink deep into the heavy down furs of their bed.

She lay there, letting the sweet, thrumming ache linger within her, taking a deep breath of the perfumed air as her mind began to lazily wander.

She was still young enough, she realized, turning her head to look at the profile of her husband in the dim light . Mayhaps I could bear him another?

She would have liked for another too. Even gladly.

The Weaver had graciously blessed both of her previous pregnancies to go smoothly, the threads of her labor holding strong and true. Perhaps she could allow the goddess to spin a third? She let her heavy head thump gently onto his chest, her hand trailing a lazy path across the shifting muscles of his torso before coming to rest on his shoulder.

Time, it seemed, had been more than a kind father to the newly proclaimed King of Yarzat. She still vividly recalled the half-scrawny kid who had first arrived at her gates and utterly overturned the ancient order of the south.

Of that lean, hungry boy, only a phantom remained in the hard, angular lines of his face, and even that was changed. Her fingers drifted upward to his jaw, her thumb playfully tracing the half-moon shape of his scarred ear.

She did not dislike the marks; they gave his face a dangerous, arresting personality that framed perfectly with the broad lines of the rest of his body. She pushed her palm against the firm slope of his shoulder.

Indeed, the passing years had treated him like a favored son. Unlike how they treated her.

Lying there in the quiet stillness, she could feel the subtle, traitorous gravity of time pulling at her own flesh, the slight, softening sag of her teats against her ribs, and a faint, cruel line of a furrow beginning to nest on her right cheek when she smiled. A deep, creeping melancholy touched her heart as she wondered how many more autumns it would be before the rest of her youthful grace followed that same downward path. How long before she woke to find the first cold strands of silver invading her thick, dark locks?

Alpheo had always loved her hair best; he would run his hands through it for hours in the dark, whispering that it smelled of summer rain and southern earth. She closed her eyes tightly, pressing herself closer to his warmth, fiercely hoping that the crown of her head would be the very last thing the years would steal from her.

As if sensing the faint tremor of her doubt, the newly crowned King of Yarzat tightened his grip around her, pulling her flush against his warmth. With his other hand, he caught the edge of the heavy down blanket, dragging it over them both to seal out the encroaching chill of the room. She could have easily allowed herself to drift back into the sweet oblivion of sleep in that position, but slumber refused to claim her a second time. Instead, Jasmine relented, choosing simply to lie still and breathe in the quiet rhythm of the moment.

Her head rose and fell in perfect time with Alpheo’s breathing, finding a soothing, silent lullaby in the steady motion.

But of course, the grand, magnificent fool had to go and ruin the perfect sanctity of the dawn by dragging politics into their bed.

It was one of his persistent sins, she supposed, being an absolute, unmitigated fool for statecraft when he could have simply been a husband.

Yet, every man alive must harbor at least one fatal flaw, otherwise they would be no men at all. She supposed it was vastly better for a wife that her king was a slave to parchment rather than a slave to the flesh. It was a rare virtue, after all, for a sovereign to keep his marriage bed strictly singular once a crown touched his brow.

It was a peculiar standard of fidelity that Jasmine was continually surprised to find mirrored by almost every man Alpheo regarded as a brother-in-arms, with the exception, naturally, of the stubbornly unmarried ones. She had broached the delicate subject of matrimony many a time during court dinners, subtly hinting that there was an abundance of highly eligible ladies from the great southern houses who would gladly crawl over broken glass to secure an imperial legate as a son-in-law.

Rykio had simply grunted at the suggestion, a gruff, non-committal noise he always deployed whenever a conversation drifted away from martial logistics and toward his displeasure. For a time, Jasmine had privately suspected the man swam toward the opposite shore entirely, until rumors of a well-hidden, low-born lover surfaced to completely dispel the notion.

Edric, by contrast, had merely barked a laugh at her matchmaking, aggressively insisting on guarding his precious freedom for a few more winters. The rogue had merrily added that while he wouldn’t wear a ring, he had absolutely no qualms about getting to know any of those high-born ladies significantly closer.

Jasmine had been forced to exert a monumental amount of self-control to keep from flicking a spoonful of hot lentil mash directly into the man’s grinning face. The scoundrel wouldn’t have even batted an eye; he likely would have just laughed and started a food fight across the high table. She rued just how many hours the bastard spent around her young son, fiercely fearing the boy would be thoroughly corrupted by the exposure. Thankfully, that didn’t seem to be the case yet; her sweet little boy remained as pure and delightful as a fresh pastry.

Then there was Laedio, who was tragically more similar to Edric than anyone else in the vanguard, save for that mysterious girl who had suddenly sprung from nowhere to trail behind his shadow. Jasmine had once cracked a rather sharp joke about mushrooms appearing overnight after a heavy rain, which Laedio had found absolutely hilarious. Her husband, however, had not shared the amusement, offering only a stern, then princely, frown.

She would have gladly stayed put in the quiet dark for a few more hours, but the King simply couldn’t help himself. Luckily for Alpheo, the specific nature of his political intrusion was pleasing enough that she decided to let the vulgar impropriety of statecraft stand.

"We received formal word from our friends in Romelia," he murmured into the dark, his calloused fingers lazily weaving through her thick black locks. "Apart from offering their grand imperial congratulations on our victory, the Emperor informed us that the High Priest would be more than forthcoming regarding the legitimacy of our title, provided certain conditions are met."

"What conditions?" Jasmine asked, the drowsiness instantly evaporating from her mind.

"What else is our dear, holy representative of the five gods ever interested in?" Alpheo asked, a tiny, deeply cynical smile playing at the corner of his lips.

"Do we actually have the silver to spare for the high altars?" she questioned, pushing herself up slightly so she could look down at him through a cascading curtain of black hair. Her chin dug slightly into the firm sternum of his chest.

"Not nearly as much as would make me comfortable," Alpheo admitted with a low grunt, his hand coming to rest on her hip.

The crown had already suffered a staggering avalanche of expenditures, mostly bled out in a frantic bid to fix the absolute clusterfuck they had inherited from the collapsed Oizen.

Alpheo had even briefly harbored half a mind to swallow his pride and secure a loan from lenders to balance the state ledgers; with the upcoming expenditures, he would have done it, too, if the interest percentages the lenders demanded weren’t completely insane. Though, he had half a plan for the latter.

"When do we officially celebrate our grand coronation then?" Jasmine asked, a breathless chuckle bubbling from her throat. She shifted her weight, her breasts pressing firmly against his chest as she interlocked her fingers with his. "Anointed by the Holy Star itself? Blessed, sanctified, and divinely appointed by the one true Faith?"

Alpheo’s grip tightened on her fingers, his dark eyes locking onto hers in the starlight. "The High Priest wants a cathedral built in the capital, paid for entirely by Yarzat coin," he said softly, revealing the price of his crown. "That will become the seat for the Archon they’ll send south to overview the religious matters in Yarzat. "

Jasmine let out a sharp, mocking whistle through her teeth. "The representative of the gods has an incredibly fat appetite for a man who claims to disdain the material world. A cathedral? He might as well ask us to forge our throne in wood to spare some more gold and silver for a statue or two.’’

’’Oil are quite costly, and it must cost him a fortune to hire hand-maiden to cover all the red pools over his white tunic.He is quite the messy eater and drinker.’’ He said with a smile, one of his innocent one that stirred something in his queen, something that prompted her to weave her finger deep in his sides causing the king of Yarazat to curl up in a ball while laughing histerically.

She could have gladly staid there playing with her husband as if they were children, joys she had not much when she was younger. She even had the thought of going for another about when he found him firm after a bit of fondling, but she was unfortunately interrupted by an heavy knocking that came on their door.

As it was the gods were seldom goods to their joys.

An heartbeat later a voice rolled out muffled from the wood. ’’Your Majesty’’ the voice belonged to Sebastien. From his tone it seemed eve he was hurt by the interruption. ’’A message had come with a red ribbon’’

And at once the small heaven they were floating in finally started to take water, begging firmly when she saw her husband’s cute smile drop from his lips.

Jasmine could not imagine, there was anything good that ever came from the colour red.