The Queen

“I ran,” he said. “Before.”

“I knew it.” She took both of his hands in hers now and interlocked their fingers.

Søren glanced at a grandfather clock and back at her.

“Five thirty,” he said. “Three and a half more hours.”

“It’ll go fast,” she said, smiling a hopeful smile. “Won’t it?”

“It will be the longest three and a half hours of my life.”

For Nora, too.

“They won’t need me at the reception which isn’t a reception. I can wait with you,” she said.

“Thank you.” He kissed her on the forehead. “What would I ever do without my Little One?”

Nora swallowed an unexpected lump in her throat.

“I promise, you won’t ever have to find out.”

Reluctantly she let go of Søren’s hands as the photographer led her and Kingsley toward Michael and Griffin. The first pictures were of the groom and groom, best man and mistress of honor.

Kingsley held out his arm for her and she took it, grateful for his company in the secret they shared.

“How is he?” Kingsley asked.

“He is exactly how you think he is,” she said.

“Never so scared in his life?”

“White-knuckle petrified.”

Kingsley kissed her cheek. “I know how he feels.”

Pictures took half an hour. Kingsley promised to make her and Søren’s excuses to anyone who asked where they were. Michael and Griffin could be told the truth, of course. They would understand. Michael had agreed to a big wedding with one stipulation—no official wedding reception. A party? Sure. Fine. Michael, young artist that he was, found manufactured moments like the ceremonial cake-cutting offensive. The reception was only for people to eat and drink and dance. Once the wedding was over, the wedding party was free to get up to whatever depraved shenanigans they wanted to. And as she and Kingsley were the wedding party, depraved shenanigans were a given.

Nora went looking for Søren and wasn’t the least surprised to find him in the castle’s small stone-and-wood chapel. She stepped inside and strode toward him.

The sun streamed through an octagonal window and cast eight-sided light onto Søren, turning his blond hair into gold in a moment of pure alchemy. In a breath, in an instant, she was fifteen years old again, and he twenty-nine, and he looked exactly like he did the first time she’d laid eyes on him. The sunlight melted the years between then and now. Her hand trembled so it was a miracle she didn’t drop her glass of red wine.

Her footsteps on the stone floor alerted Søren to her presence. He lifted his head and turned back to her. The mask of composure had fallen, and she saw anguish in his eyes. She set her glass of wine on the altar and went to him, gathering him in her arms, holding him to her heart and resting her chin on the top of his head.

“How are you, my sir?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, looking up at her. “There have been days in my life where I’ve woken up not knowing that later on that very day, my entire life would change. The day I met Kingsley, the day I met you. Usually you don’t know the day or the hour. Today I do.”

“Remember that story I wrote about Queen Esther when I was in high school?”

“How could I forget it? I must have read it a thousand times.”

“You did?”

“An erotic story written by a beautiful sixteen-year-old girl I was desperately and unrepentantly in love with and featuring a hero who looked suspiciously like me? I read it until the ink faded and the pages crumbled.”

It embarrassed Nora how much it pleased her that Søren had loved her story that much.

“I’ll have you know I did not base King Xerxes on you.”

“He was blond. A blond Persian.”

“Poetic license.” She sat at his side in the pew. “Queen Esther looked suspiciously like me, as well. Anyway...writing that story changed my life. I’d never written anything like that before. All I was trying to do was flirt with you and now twenty-two years later I’ve made an entire career from writing. I didn’t know my life would change that day by writing one little story. And yet...here we are. All thanks to you.”

“And Queen Esther. And Queen Eleanor.”

“I’m not really a queen.”

“You’ve always been a queen in my eyes. Especially now.”

“I can’t believe I’m wearing a wedding dress. How do I let Griffin talk me into these things?”

“It’s exquisite. You’re exquisite.”

Søren kissed her lightly on the lips. His mouth shivered against hers. Søren was a man of quiet depth, as if he kept a secret second heart locked away in a glass case. It would explain how much he felt and how strongly and yet how rarely such feelings were allowed to escape from captivity. Sometimes before they made love he would cut her skin with a sharp paper-thin blade and the act was so intimate and harrowing it would leave him shaking. It scared him to take her life in his hands, and yet it was at such times they felt closest to each other. She knew his trembling now was for a similar reason.

“Do you forgive me, Little One?” Søren asked.

“What mortal sin have you committed recently?”

“You know my sins better than I do.”

“Yes. Which is why I tell you there is no need to beg my forgiveness for anything.”

“You have a forgiving heart,” Søren said. “I have always admired that about you.”

“I know myself. I know my own weaknesses and failures. Jesus was always so kind to sinners and so cruel to hypocrites.”

“Am I a hypocrite?” Søren asked.

“You’re human.”

“You don’t have to be insulting, Eleanor.”

She laughed and rested her head on his shoulder. He sighed so her whole body moved with his. Somewhere behind and above them a bell rang. Six times the bell chimed. Six o’clock and all was well.

Three hours and counting.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” Søren said.