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“You do know how to put on a party.”

Quinn turned her head just enough to see the side of Jonathan’s face. She didn’t know he’d come to be standing right next to her, but then, she often didn’t understand how he managed the things he did. She chuckled softly. “I don’t know anything about putting on parties. I didn’t do any of this. You can thank my head housekeeper, Ruth, for most of it. My mother and sisters and a few others are responsible for the rest.”

He was silent for a moment–a rare state for him, before he let out a laugh and moved even closer to her shoulder. “Your mother?”

“You do know how to put on a party.”

Quinn turned her head just enough to see the side of Jonathan’s face. She didn’t know he’d come to be standing right next to her, but then, she often didn’t understand how he managed the things he did. She chuckled softly. “I don’t know anything about putting on parties. I didn’t do any of this. You can thank my head housekeeper, Ruth, for most of it. My mother and sisters and a few others are responsible for the rest.”

He was silent for a moment–a rare state for him, before he let out a laugh and moved even closer to her shoulder. “Your mother?”

It was bait. He was trying to get a rise out of her, and there was a time it would have worked. But that time was over now. “One of them. I suppose not everyone is lucky enough to have two.”

His gaze traveled around the ballroom, pausing at the candlelit centerpieces on the tables scattered around, lingering on the musicians in the corner, playing a joyful melody while children spun and slid in their stockings around the marble floor. “As I said, Your Majesty, you have learned to put on quite the party. It really is magnificent, even if it is a bit…small.”

“I did invite him, you know.”

“I know. I suspect he even considered coming. But, some families are more complicated than others.”

She turned and gave him half a smile. “That’s a kind way of putting it.”

He laughed out loud. “I have had far more practice with the rest of our relatives than you have, Queen Quinn. Not everyone is lucky enough to have even one mother the likes of either of yours.”

She fought to keep herself from sighing, fought to keep her arms relaxed at her sides instead of crossing them in front of her chest. It was already so hard, on a day like today, to not be thinking of her other mother, the one who’d given birth to her and raised her. The one who would have very much liked to be in attendance at Zander’s wedding, if she wasn’t living in an entirely different world. But today, Quinn only wanted to celebrate her siblings and the friends who had just become her family, too. 

“I’m sure Charles had his reasons for not coming, Jonathan. I don’t expect everyone to take the chance of traveling across the kingdom when we’re still working to get the last of the gray throat epidemic under control. Charles was asked only recently to stay put and tend to things in his own village. I’d hardly expect him to actually make the trek to a small wedding party, although I did invite him as a courtesy. I wouldn’t really expect you to be here either, if…”

“If I were allowed to leave the castle?”

“If you were allowed to leave the castle, I imagine that Ellen is the only one of my father’s siblings I’d see for moons and moons right now, yes. Although, you’d probably show up in the middle of the night with a strange child you kidnapped, just to be entertaining.”

“I’m not much of one for doing the same thing twice, Your Majesty. I get bored too quickly.”

“I’m sure.” She didn’t even try to fight the chuckle that escaped. If nothing else, her uncle was entertaining.

“Speaking of the child…”

“She’s over there.” Quinn nodded to the far corner of the room, where a woman sat with the tiny child in her lap, both of them mostly hidden behind a table piled high with drinks and food and various articles of children’s clothing. “She’s recovering slowly, but seems to be doing quite a bit better. She took a liking to Mia’s mother almost right away. Nobody else can hold her like that–except Mia.”

Jonathan chuckled to himself. “I am glad to hear she’s doing so well. You intend to keep her, then?”

“We intend to provide whatever the child needs, including shelter, food, and as much love and care as we can until such time as we might reunite her with her own family,” William said from behind the two of them. Quinn didn’t know how long he’d been listening, but she didn’t care, either. She stretched her hand toward him, reveling in the warmth and safety of his hand closing securely around hers.

William stepped in close and leaned down to kiss Quinn softly on the lips, using his free hand to brush his fingers down the side of her cheek. He lingered for just a little longer than was technically appropriate, given the audience, but she didn’t stop him. The emotion and excitement of the weddings had gotten to both of them today, and the party had now dragged on slightly too long.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse us, Jonathan,” William said once he finally broke away. “But some of our guests will be wanting to leave soon, and we need to be making our formal exit so that the new couples can retire for some time to themselves.”

Jonathan held out one hand and gave a little bow. “I’ll be happy to see myself out once you’re gone, Your Majesties.”

Quinn managed to refrain from rolling her eyes. “Sir Ethan will be happy to escort you back to your rooms,” she said, nodding at the guard standing behind them.

“Someday, your Majesty, you’ll realize you can’t lock me up forever for nothing.”

“Perhaps someday, Jonathan. We’ll see.”

William squeezed her hand as he led her away; she couldn’t tell if the curl at the edge of his lip was amusement or exasperation. Probably both.

Thomas and Mia stood just to the side of the dance floor, so close to each other it was hard to tell where Thomas’s velvet cape ended and Mia’s dress began, both of them the rich purple of Eirentheos, lined with silver stitching. Linnea and Zander were only a few feet away from them, standing together on the dance floor, swaying back and forth to the music. Their arms were so tightly wound around each other as they kissed, again, that it might have been inappropriate had it not been their wedding night. And even so…

“We may have left this too late,” William said, close to her ear. She couldn’t see his mouth, but she could feel the laughter in his breath against her cheek. They’ll all run out of here too fast for us to surprise them.”

“Will they really be surprised, do you think?”

He squeezed her hand as he shrugged. “There’s only one way to find out.”

*****

Zander thought he should be used to all this by now. He’d been in this world long enough that the grandiosity of formal events shouldn’t still surprise him. But it did. Even this ceremony, tiny by royal standards in Philotheum, had been more beautiful and elaborate than he’d ever dreamed his wedding would be. And still, as he looked at Linnea standing beside him, his bride–could that be real?–he wished he could have given her even more.

Just as he thought this, she turned slightly and slid her arm behind his back, resting her head against his shoulder. “This was perfect,” she whispered.

He wrapped his arm around her, pulling her in close to his side and kissed her temple. “Are you sure it was enough?”

She looked up at him with her wide, gray eyes, studying his face in that way that made him feel like she could see into the depths of his soul. Maybe she could. “This never had to be enough, Zander. This was only a party. You, however…” She squeezed herself tightly against him and slid her hand across his back and down to his hip so she could grab his other hand and twine her fingers with his. “You are enough.”

It was such a simple thing–such a Linnea thing to say, really, and yet, somehow, it was exactly what he needed to hear right then. Today had been so wonderful in so many ways, but, still, there had been several times today he’d felt it so acutely, the absence of the people who should have been at his wedding. And then, suddenly, he needed to pull his hand away from hers so he could wipe at the moisture in his eyes. He didn’t know where that had come from.

“I wish you had everyone here who should be, too,” she said quietly, and he felt a tiny spot of warm dampness through his shirt where the side of her face rested on his shoulder. She didn’t make any move to hide it; she just pressed even closer to him.

There was a lump in his throat now, too, but it didn’t matter. “Supposed to isn’t real,” he whispered around it.

She reached for his hand again, pulling it down to his waist, making him hold the soft weight of her arm against him. “It still hurts on days like today, though,” she said gently. “And that’s okay. It means they’re real and they still matter.”

“Everyone is here who needs to be,” he murmured against her hair, breathing in the scent of the rose oil she’d bathed with this morning. She must have… No, thinking about Linnea in the bath was not a good plan while they still stood in the ballroom surrounded by dozens of people. Instead, he glanced over at the tables, catching Charlotte’s eye.

His new mother-in-law smiled and rose from her seat entirely too gracefully for a woman balancing an infant in each arm. She extracted her necklace from the grabby hands of one of the babies–Benjamin–and handed him to her husband before crossing the room toward them.

As soon as she reached them, tiny Adeline stretched out her hands and nearly dove from her grandmother’s arms into Linnea’s, where she immediately grabbed a strand of Linnea’s hair and began chewing it. Zander chuckled and helped Linnea extract the tiny beast, somehow winding up with Adeline in his arms instead. Not that he minded. He snuggled the warm little weight of her close to his chest and planted a kiss in her hair while she found the hem of her dress and shoved that into her mouth, instead.

“They’re getting hungry and tired,” Charlotte said. “As are the two of you, I expect? Tired, anyway?”

Zander was not in the least bit tired, but he suspected from the glimmer in Charlotte’s eyes that she knew this already, and he simply nodded.

Although Quinn was most definitely getting her bearings as queen, her skills were nothing compared to Charlotte’s. The next few minutes under Charlotte’s guidance were the smoothest, most organized whirlwind Zander had ever seen. He didn’t remember quite how they’d all made it to the staircase in the main hall, but he was reasonably certain that the guests had all been bid a proper farewell, and that the whole exit had looked as though it had been planned and choreographed for moons. Of course, in Charlotte’s extensive collection of notebooks, it probably had.

In any case, he and Linnea each held one of the babies as they followed the rest of the members of the Rose family up the sweeping staircase, Thomas and Mia were beside them, looking as confused as he felt. He’d imagined a lot of things about his wedding night, but most of them had involved him and Linnea alone, not surrounded by their entire family.

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