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“Now,” Felix says, injecting a little good humor back into his voice, “how about we try to make this place a little more comfortable?”

As we get to work taking a few of the dust covers off the furniture, I try to tamp down some of the worry that’s still threatening to choke me.

“Do you call Eren ‘majesty’?” I ask, truly curious.

“Only when we’re in court.”

“And when you’re not?”

“When we’re not, I call him ‘bastard’ more than anything else. ‘Eren’ if I’m feeling generous.”

A laugh—a true, improbable laugh—breaks from me. “Somehow I’m not surprised. But if that’s the case, why can’t you drop the formalities for me as well? Who’s around to care?”

I gesture to the empty cabin around us, and when I look back at Felix, I find him studying me with a focused, contemplative expression on his face.

“You would be comfortable with that?”

“Of course!” I say, laughing again. “I was a librarian back in my realm. Hardly royalty. The title makes me a little uncomfortable, if I’m being honest.”

“I don’t know if Eren would—”

“I can deal with Eren.”

“Is that so?” Felix asks, interest growing even more acute. “You’ve got the demon king all figured out?”

Something about the question has reality crashing back into me. While we’re here, chatting and safe and far away from whatever’s happening in the chaos back at the mountain keep, Eren’s still there and in danger. It sobers me immediately.

“I don’t know,” I tell Felix honestly, voice breaking a little. “I’d like to think that one day I might.”

One day. Some distant future where the realm is safe and my Goddess-selected husband is mine fully. Mine to claim and keep, mine to enjoy without fear.

It’s been hard to think of anything beyond the immediate need and danger, hard to imagine what it might mean for me long-term that I’m a Tithe bride bound to this realm and this king. It’s hardly any easier to imagine that future now, with Eren at risk and the entirety of our lives together up in the air.

“You’ll come to know him, Allie,” Felix says gently. “All of him. If I know one thing about my king, it’s that he’d never keep anything from his mate. He’s a loyal soul, and loyal to you above all.”

Tears threaten at the backs of my eyes. “Thank you, Felix.”

Knowing there isn’t much more to be said at the moment, the two of us go back to work making the space livable again. Covers come off sofas and chairs, and I venture into the kitchen to find a broom to sweep out the hearth. Felix ducks outside and comes back with a stack of dried logs to lie down for a fire.

“I’ve got it,” I tell him. “Stand back?”

Though he arches a brow, Felix obliges. Closing my eyes, I concentrate on bringing a hotter, more incendiary version of the witchlight I summoned last night to the tips of my fingers. When I’m certain I’ve got it, I cast it out to the waiting logs. They break into an immediate, crackling blaze, and when I glance back and catch Felix’s surprised expression, a little thrill of pride moves through me.

“Well done,” he tells me.

The chairs we settle into are stiff with age, but comfortable enough with the roaring fire in front of us. Silence falls between us as we both sit and contemplate the shifting flames.

“Felix,” I ask after a few minutes. “How long have you known Eren?”

“All my life,” he says with a smile. “And as such, I am in a unique position to tell you any number of embarrassing stories about your husband.”

“Oh,” I say, rubbing my hands together in over-exaggerated glee. “Please do.”

He tells me about some of the trouble he and Eren got into as young demons. Pranks pulled and risky, childish behavior that had both their mothers groaning with frustration. Laughingly, he tells me about a female demon both he and Eren tried to impress when they were adolescents with increasingly outlandish feats of bravery, only for her to reject them both.

“I imagine that taught you both your lesson about how to impress a woman,” I tell him, wiping a tear of laughter away from the corner of my eye.

“Not at all,” Felix assures me with a grin. “And, as you can see, both of us remained resolutely unentangled. Well, at least until the Goddess decided otherwise for him.”