Since I know that it’s been a while since I posted anything, I thought I’d give everyone a tease from the next chapter in The Visagar Chronicles. Let me know what you think. For full context on these relationships, be sure to check out the full story on FictionPress.com here.
Sitting beside them, leaning on the large wolf’s stomach, Jazabel gently rubbed his flank. “My sister-in-law was too. Cassiel actually proposed to her by tying our great grandmother’s ring around a kitten’s neck and unleashing it into her bedroom in the castle. When she was awoken by the little furball pouncing on her, she was too excited by the fact that a kitten had found itself in her room that she missed the ring around its neck until my brother came through the door and asked her about it twenty minutes later. Her best friend held it throughout their wedding, and it was so small and so cute. Our parents teased them constantly that the cat was their first child. Evie died when Lux turned ten. Put a bit of a downer on the festivities planned for the day. For her next birthday, Lux commissioned a statue of Evie for his mother, it still stands in the royal gardens to this day. It’s become a bit of a joke tradition for any royal to ask that the spirit of Evie bless their upcoming nuptials with the same happiness that my brother’s marriage had.”
Sheik smiled at the story. Swallowing the last bit of rabbit that was their dinner, Sheik said, “That’s actually really sweet. And now I wish that I had thought of that for when I proposed to Cascie.”
Sheik didn’t miss the very subtle way which Jazabel brought her hand up to lean on, which just also happened to wipe her cheek dry of the tear that had silently slid down her cheek. But her smile, and the brightness of her eyes, made Sheik forget about the sadness that she seemed to be feeling as she asked them, “How did you propose? I know that you promised Cascie that you’d marry her upon your return, but that doesn’t seem like a proposal, just a promise.”
A blushing smile came over them at the memory of how they’d come to be engaged to Cascie. It was a memory that they’d cherish forever, for it was one of the happiest moments of their life. But Sheik was lying if they said that it wasn’t a slightly embarrassing story. Seeing the nervous smile on their lips, Jazabel seemed to come to a different conclusion. “If it’s too personal, you don’t have to tell me. It’s not really any of my business…”
“No, it’s not like that,” Sheik said, half hiding their face in the wolf’s fur. “It’s just…really embarrassing. And she refuses to let me propose in a slightly more dignified way.”
Looking to her, Sheik was mortified to see the jubilant mirth in Jazabel’s eyes as she leaned in conspiratorially. “Oh, now I need to know. This is going to be very entertaining; I just know it!” she said with delighted smile seeming to take up her entire face.
“Uuuggggghhhhhh!” they sighed as they turned away from the Night Queen’s gleeful look of anticipation to hide deeper in Fenris’ fur.
“You can tell me yourself, or I can ask my niece when I finally meet her and have us both laughing at you,” she taunted with what Sheik couldn’t see but knew was a smile.
Pulling their face out of the wolf’s fur, Sheik stuck their tongue out at Jazabel before giving an overly dramatic and defeated sigh. “Fine,” they said with a huff. “I asked her in my sleep.” They hoped that this summation would give the Night Queen what she wanted, while saving them from going into greater detail.
But Sheik should have known better. Ladies of the Night were said to bring misfortune to anyone who spent too much time with them, and Sheik knew that this was just scratching the surface. They supposed that they should be grateful that their misery was only to be embarrassment; but in the moment, Sheik wished it was nearly anything else. “And just how did you manage to do that?” Jazabel asked with a smile full of mirthful intrigue and delight.
Perhaps the greater tragedy was having to be her friend, Sheik thought in a moment of spite. “I had her mother’s ring, hidden away so that she wouldn’t know about it. And for the past month I’d been trying to figure out what the best way to ask her was. I rehearsed and rewrote speeches in my head, and apparently my sleep. She woke up before me and was watching me sleep, when I started to mumble in my sleep. I can’t remember what I was dreaming I was saying and she couldn’t understand what I was saying until I just blurted ‘Cascie van Rahl, will you marry me?’ She woke me by kissing me awake as she just muttered ‘Yes, yes I will marry you, Sheik Visagar!’ between every kiss. I honestly thought I was dreaming, being woken up in such a fashion. But when she told me that it wasn’t a dream, and that I’d mumbled my entire proposal until the end, I got up to get the ring. And I fell out of bed in my haste to retrieve it.”
Jazabel had silently been laughing since the beginning of their story, but once Sheik had finished, they were horrified to hear her girlish giggles ring throughout the night air.
