by A. B. Keuser
Max lay to his right, still a man, and Silvia sat, sleeping in a chair beyond him.
The silver queen sat in a similar chair on the opposite side. Her brow creased, she studied him with a scowl, as if she found him lacking.
“Good morning, your majesty.” His voice was rough and quiet enough he didn’t think he’d wake the others.
“You found what you were looking for.”
The statement didn’t seem to need an agreement, but he gave it anyway. “I did. But I found something I didn’t know I was looking for as well.”
“You can’t take her with you, if you decide to leave. Know that.”
“Can’t you look inside my head and know my intentions?”
“You are tied very tightly to your prince. And the blood that runs in his veins is iron laced. It blocks him, and you, from some very simple magics.”
“You see him as a threat, don’t you?” Heinrich asked.
Miranichelle’s face seemed to soften, but it was momentary. “I don’t know what he is, that means I have to assume the worst.”
“But you’re a fairy.”
She looked at him like he’d lost his wits.
“The only thing that keeps you in our realm is the people who love you.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“It’s not a threat; it’s a statement of fact. I love your daughter. Max has said as much too. I had resigned myself to dying very soon. And I was okay with that, because I was able to spend what little time I had left with them. That doesn’t change simply because I’ve been given a second chance at life. Max would undoubtedly tell you the same if he was awake.”
“And now that you’re free of Hagnesophia’s curse? What do you plan to do? Stay here? Run away? Find a different kingdom to call your own, one where knows one knows who, or what, you are?”
“Unless Silvia tells us we can’t stay, we’re not going anywhere.” He glanced at Silvia and let himself hope. “If she wants us, we are hers.”
“Then welcome to the family. If you hurt my daughter, nothing Hagnesophia could have conjured will compare to what I will do to the two of you.”
Swallowing, Heinrich nodded because it seemed like what she wanted.
Miranichelle swept from the room, her gossamer gown trailing behind her like mist.
When the door shut with a snap, Max barked a laugh. “Fairies. They always want to remind you how easily they could squash you like a bug.”
Heinrich rolled over, his chest burning, and glanced at Silvia. Her face still slack with sleep, her head lolled against the side of the wing back chair.
Max pressed up on his elbows and then reached for her, gently shaking her knee.
She came awake like a mechanical doll and blinked at them a moment before recognition set in. “You’re awake.”
Neither of them answered.
“Do you need anything? Water, a compress?”
Heinrich shook his head. “Just you.”
“You’re healing.”
“We’re all tired. Slide out of that dress, get in bed, and we’ll close these curtains and sleep the rest of the day away.”
She gave them a beleaguered look and pressed herself to her feet. At first, Heinrich thought she was leaving them, but the lock clicked into place in the door, and she turned back to them.
Pulling the curtains on his side of the bed closed, Heinrich swallowed heavily as she slipped loose the hooks that held her dress together and with one final twist of her fingers, dropped the silver ball gown to the floor, sliding down her body the way he wanted to run his hands down her.
He doubted he’d ever get tired of seeing that. The contented sigh that came from his right told him Max agreed.
Heinrich had to remind himself that he was not up for anything strenuous. That could wait; they had the rest of their lives to enjoy each other.
Crawling onto the bed from its foot, Silvia drew the curtains shut behind her, and slid beneath the covers between them.
Max drew a finger along the bottom of her jaw and met her lips with a kiss. Heinrich licked his lips and waited his turn.
“Thank you,” Max said as he pulled away.
“For what?”
Heinrich turned her face toward him. “For saving us.” He kissed her, tongue tracing the inside of her lips, tasting Max on them.
Life was going to be a blessing, and he was going to enjoy every moment of it.
Heinrich wrapped his arms around her and she tucked her head down, nuzzling against his chest while Max wrapped himself around her from behind.
Silvia kissed his chest and sighed contentedly. “Will you stay?”
“As long as you’ll have us,” Max said, voicing Heinrich’s thoughts.
“Then I have news.” She glanced timidly between them. “We’ll only have eight and a half months to ourselves.”
Max’s hand slipped between them to press against her stomach. “We’re going to need a bigger room.”
This was the life Heinrich had always wanted. Now that he had it, he wasn’t going to let anything take it away from him.
EPILOGUE
Heinrich still had unsightly bruises covering his torso from his hips to just below his nipples. They had turned a disgusting shade of greenish yellow that had led Max to jokingly say that this time, it was he who was turning into a frog.
Fairy wounds took too long to heal.
Glancing once more in the mirror, he pulled on his shirt and stepped out of the dressing room into the enormous space. The room itself seemed even larger than the first time he and Silvia explored it. And they’d been living in it for a month and a half. And the bed…. It was more than enough space for the three of them.
Max lay across the foot of the bed, staring up at the canopy.
It was a different palace, a different country and a different queen… but every change was for the better.
Though he had to admit some parts of their new life were exhausting.
The last week had been a whirlwind, and today didn’t look like it would be any easier. Miranichelle was a force to be reckoned with, and when she was coordinating a wedding…. Luckily, she hadn’t wanted any input. And Heinrich was content to sit back and wait for the storm to pass. All he had to do was show up when and where Miranichelle told him to.
Above and beyond that, he spent all his time with the two people he loved.
Max had not been so patient. That was how they’d wound up married two weeks before the ceremony Miranichelle had planned and why they were subsequently here, hiding from the aftermath of that.
A knock sounded on the door a moment before it opened.
Ivy stepped into the room with a hand over her eyes. “Please tell me all three of you are decent.”
“What if they are, but I’m not?” Silvia asked, teasing.
“If that’s the case…” She dropped her hand and stuck her tongue out at Silvia. “You’re late.”
Throwing her hands up, Silvia feigned frustration. “I’ve given her everything she wants, you’d think she’d return the favor and show me a little leeway.”
Shaking her head, Ivy led their odd little procession out of the room.
They followed after her, and when they reached the room where the members of even their distant family were gathered, Silvia was quickly pulled away. Max was dragged away next, and Heinrich shook his head at how easily they had been divided.
He wound up with Silvia’s sister who held her copper-haired daughter in her arms, bouncing gently, but her focus was divided. She greeted him, and then immediately scowled at a boy who looked to be about ten. The boy looked nothing like his parents, and he’d only ever heard him called by a ridiculous title.
“Would you mind terribly?” She asked without explaining.
Isabelle handed the child to him and moved to deal with the boy who had stuck his whole hand in a fountain of chocolate.
The little girl in his arms stared up at him with silver eyes and reached up at him as if trying to grab hold
of his face. Copper curls covered over her dark forehead—too much hair for so young a child. She giggled and it sent a sharp pang through his chest.
“That is the look of a man who doesn’t want to wait any longer,” Max said, moving beside him and wiggling a finger at their niece. She immediately grabbed hold of his finger.
“I won’t deny that. I was thinking about a baby with silver eyes and iron gray hair. Ours will be…. there is no word for it.”
He looked away from Max to where Silvia spoke to the Cyprean princess and her wife.
Sylvia turned and gave them an odd smile before finishing her conversation and walking through the crowded space to them.
“You’re both staring at me, and it looks like you’ve stolen my sister’s baby.” She took the baby from him, shaking her silver orb in front of the girl like a rattle and he had to take a step back.
Sharing a glance with Max, he bit his tongue.
They were safe, they were in love, and they would never lose one another again.
Silvia seemed to know exactly what he was thinking. She handed their niece and the orb back to her sister, before taking both of their hands.
She led them from the room. How they slipped away unnoticed after so little time, he didn’t know.
Grabbing their cloaks from a butler who appeared, already prepared for them, she tugged them out the front door, down the steps and along a meandering path. She only let go of their hands when they plunged into the forest.
“Where are we going?” Max asked from the back.
“To where this all started.”
Heinrich followed her in silence and they stopped beside a pool glittering in moonlight. Max laughed and squeezed Heinrich’s shoulder. “This is where she found me.”
Silvia nodded, and threw down her cloak before peeling Max’s off as well, with Heinrich’s added, they had more than enough space between them. Silvia’s dress dropped to the ground a moment later and they both drank in the sight of her. Lips curved in a smile, her stomach curved with the first sign of their child. She glowed and it had nothing to do with the light filtering through the trees.
Max pulled his pants off before Heinrich could and he stopped, hand on his belt and just watched as Silvia took Max in her mouth, the contentment on her face as she sucked him in and luxuriated in him.
Heinrich joined them after a few more moments of playing the voyeur, naked and surrounded by no sounds other than the trickling waterfall on the far end of the pool.
Tugging them both down to their makeshift bed, Silvia kissed him, drawing a line down his jaw with her finger. Max dragged her back and she punished him with only a peck before wriggling away from them both.
With a smile, she pulled a vial of oil from the crumpled pile of her dress and handed it to Heinrich. “I believe it’s your turn.”
He tangled his fist in her hair and pulled her in for a long, languid kiss.
There was nowhere he’d rather be, no two people he’d rather spend the rest of his life with.
… And they lived Happily Ever After.
Thank you!
I hope you enjoyed reading IRON HEINRICH! Thank you for taking the time.
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The Clockwork Fairytales series includes: Beauty & The Clockwork Beast, Hazel & Gretel, Iron Heinrich, and Jack & The Mechanical Beanstalks (June 2016)
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About the Author
When A. B. Keuser isn't trying to make sense of her own brain soup, she writes the "charmingly gritty" Flynn Monroe series, space operas that will keep you guessing, and steamy clockwork fairytales. An Oregon native whose life has transplanted her in the Sonoran desert - where she's slowly desiccating - she writes to stay out of the sun and heat.
Other Books by A. B. Keuser
The Clockwork Fairytales
Beauty & The Clockwork Beast
Hazel & Gretel
Iron Heinrich
Jack & The Mechanical Beanstalks (JUN 2016)
The Xyvar Series
Windthrow
Blowdown (OCT 2016)
The Flynn Monroe Series
Enemies of a Sort
The Betrayal of Flynn Monroe
The Reformation of Tyler Harris
The Salvation of Rayna Castiq
Quick and Painless
The Escape of Joslyn Williams
The Deception of Calliope Druthers
Irreparable Damages
The Lunar Colony VI Series
Safety Zone
Gravity Darkening
Zero Proximity
Terminal Shift
Non-Passive Failure
Omnibus Edition
Short Stories
Never Alone
Pugilist Dreams
Copyright
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 2016 Amy Johnson
http://www.abkeuser.com