Daughters of Lyra: Heart of an Emperor (9 page)

“
Are you going
to talk to my father?” she said and he nodded again. “I think I
should go with you and perhaps we should bring Van and the other
one too. We might need all the protection we can get.”

“
Why?” He
frowned at her.

“
My mother will
be there.”

“
And?”

It didn’t seem to be
sinking in.

“
Well, you see,
I already have ties to your species.”

“
You do?” His
frown didn’t shift.

“
My mother
isn’t wholly Minervan. She’s part Varkan. My father can feel things
but it’s strongest when my mother is with him.”

His eyes shot wide. He
paled to a shade of white Sophia didn’t like.

“
She will be
able to sense the pregnancy,” Regis said in a distant tone, his
eyes bright but unfocused. Clearly, he enjoyed the idea of having
to face her parents as much as she did.

“
Your bags are
packed and I have nothing I’d need to take with me,” she said and
sat up. “We could run away.”

He sat up too and frowned
at the luggage.

“
No.”

“
No?” The
thought that he might actually stand up to her parents made her
squirm inside. She didn’t want to start a war between Lyra and
Varka and if Regis went to face her father alone, that might
happen. Both of them seemed unduly stubborn. “Then let me go alone.
My father won’t deny me.”

He looked
uncomfortable.

There was a buzz over the
intercom beside the door.

She tensed and looked at
Regis.

“
Open the door,
Sophia,” her father said over the intercom.

Regis stood and put his
jacket on. She could only watch as he buttoned it and then did his
trousers up and fastened his sword around his waist. He gave her a
smile, swept the long strands of his black hair out of his face,
and then strode to the door. She curled up on the bed and hugged
her knees to her chest. At least they were both dressed. Perhaps
her father wouldn’t put two and two together. If he did, she prayed
to Iskara that he made five.

Regis opened the door. Her
father walked in and Sophia smiled until her mother stepped out
from behind him. They both looked at her, their shock written on
their faces.

Sophia opened her mouth to
explain but Regis stepped between them.

“
I, Regis,
Count of Sagres, Emperor Varka, kneel before you,” he said and
unsheathed his sword and knelt in front of her father. She leaned
forwards, anxious to see what he was going to do. He balanced the
sword across both of his palms and lowered his head. “Your
highness, Lyra I, King of Lyra, I offer you my sword.”

“
Your life?”
her father said and Sophia started forwards but stopped when Regis
looked at her.

The sword symbolised his
life?

No.

“
My life, in
exchange for your daughter’s,” he said and looked up at her father.
He raised the sword up, offering it just as he had said. She shook
her head, afraid that any exchange he spoke of would be taken
literally by her father. She could see the anger in his eyes and
knew that both he and her mother had sensed what had happened to
her. Her father would have felt it from her mother. “I willingly
give my life for hers.”

“
Regis,” Sophia
whispered and reached out to him. Tears blurred her vision. She bit
her lip and sobbed when her father took the sword and held it tight
in one hand. “Father?”

She cringed and flinched
away when he brought the sword down and there was a harsh
thud.

Silence
reigned.

“
I do not
understand,” Regis said and Sophia opened one eye and then the
other. Relief filled her swift and sweet when she saw that he was
unharmed and that her father had buried the sword point down into
the wooden floor.

“
My daughter
loves you,” her father said on a sigh. “Enough that she has given
herself to you. I cannot cause harm to one my daughter loves, not
when it would in turn cause harm to her.”

“
Sophia,” Regis
said and stood. He held his hand out to her and she went to him,
slipping her hand into his and holding it tightly. Her stomach
fluttered with nerves as she stood before her mother and father
with him. He turned to her father. “You will give your daughter to
me, to protect from this day forward?”

Her father nodded. Her
mother smiled wide and looped her arm through her
father’s.

“
I give my
daughter to you on one condition.”

“
Anything,”
Regis said.

“
That you
promise to love her until the end of your days, whenever those may
be, and beyond them.”

“
I will always
love her.” Regis turned away from her father and looked at her. She
blushed when he took both of her hands and held them, his thumbs
caressing her fingers. “I will always love you, Sophia. I am no
longer afraid of these feelings or how little control I have over
them. For you, I embrace them and the fear they bring, just as you
embraced it for me.”

Sophia bit her lip and
smiled when he pulled her into his arms. She rested her head
against his chest and listened to his heart beating strong. Her
heart. She had captured it just as he had captured hers.

She cursed her parents
when she saw them still standing by the door and tried to shoo them
away. Her father gave her a look that said he wasn’t going
anywhere.

“
One more
condition,” he said and Regis looked at him. “Sophia is Lyran and
will live many long years just as the rest of our species, but not
as yours. Give her a wedding present when you are married in two
night’s time.”

Sophia frowned. “Two
nights?”

“
Hush,” her
mother said with a knowing smile. Sophia couldn’t believe it. If
they intended for her to marry Regis in only two nights then they
must have been setting everything up from shortly after she had
spoken to her father in the garden.

“
I will give
her any present that she desires,” Regis said and she smiled at
him.

“
Give her this
one. Give her the aeturnalia solis.”

Regis’ expression changed
to one so serious that she was dying to know what her father had
said. She hadn’t understood it. It had sounded like the old
language that Regis had spoken.

“
I will,” he
said and her parents left.

Sophia looked at Regis,
eager to know what it was that she would be getting as a present.
It sounded interesting but the look on Regis’s face made her worry.
She hoped it wasn’t anything to do with him dying again. The
thought of him leaving her was terrifying. She didn’t want him to
ever leave her side, and definitely not on her wedding
night.

In two night’s
time.

Night.

She was getting married at
night?

Evening at least. She
wanted to see Regis’s face during the ceremony.

“
Regis?” she
said as he wrapped his arms around her and the door closed. “What’s
aeturnalia solis?”

He brushed the waves of
black hair from her face and smiled at her.

“
Something I
would have given you without his asking, but only with your
permission.”

“
Permission?”
she said and frowned.

“
It goes with
this,” he said and stroked the mark on her throat. “Think of it as
love everlasting.”

“
Love
everlasting?” she said and then remembered what she had read about
Varkans. “Or life everlasting?”

He smiled and cupped her
cheek. “Both, for you.”

“
Love
everlasting,” she whispered as she stared into his eyes.

Eternity with
Regis.

It sounded
wonderful.

Taking his hand, she
placed it over her stomach, holding it there, and kissed him. She
wasn’t going to leave this room until the ceremony in two night’s
time. After that, she wasn’t going to leave Regis’s side
forever.

She smiled when Regis
nicked her lip with his teeth and kissed her harder, stealing her
breath away but in control this time, just as she knew he always
would be from now on. Now that she was his.

Always.

And soon he would be
hers.

Forever.

The
End

###

About the
author

Felicity Heaton
is a great believer in love at first sight and the romantic ideal.
Having grown up reading extensively, she developed a deep love of
classical literature, ranking Jane Eyre, North & South, and
Persuasion amongst her all time favourite reads. The most romantic
moment of her life was when her husband got down on bended knee on
the steps of Sacré Coeur, Paris, at night in front of several
hundred spectators and proposed. She was too drunk on love, and
subsequently champagne, to care about the audience. All she could
see was the man that she loved. A writer of emotion and life, she
always strives to touch a chord of familiarity in her readers and
give them characters they can love and a read to
remember.

Connect with
me online:

Website:
http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk

Twitter:
http://www.twitter.com/felicityheaton

Blog:
http://felicityheaton.blogspot.com/