A SEA BETWEEN

Chapter 18: The Change of the Tides

Ola it is me. Life has been crazy and not in a good way.. Have had SHIT weeks behind me and horrible things happening in my family (hello coronavirus and fuck you), but I will not give up on this story.

Casual warning: it will take 4 weddings, a funeral and nine baby showers (lol I kid) for these two to come to their senses again but I don't want to spoil things.

Sorry for the time jumps in this, I want to speed things up a bit. And sorry for the quality of smut in this, I hate writing it. I do.

xxxxxx

Sleep refused to take her so all she could do was think, it wasn't the first time she had done so while being in Astella. No, she had spent many a night either crying or overthinking here, so this wasn't exactly new to her.

Yet this time she was flooded memories of events that took place in the one year she had lived in this country she had eventually grown to love. She thought about how her first day in Astella had been. How her wedding day had been and the months that followed... how her relationship with Draco had changed from how he despised her, even though Dante had confided in her that she had been a bit blind.

It happened when Mara returned from that faithful day on the beach, where he had kissed her, and Dante had noticed she was acting out of sorts and had stopped her to ask what was wrong. She told Dante about the kiss and to her surprise Dante reacted a bit strangely, he laughed and said, "it's about time".

"What do you mean?", she had asked with a frown to which he shot her cheeky smile.

"Oh, come on Mara. Surely you must have been aware that my darling little brother never hated you and certainly never found you unattractive either, just acted like it. To be fair, he probably didn't realise it himself, but I saw the way he looked at you, secretly, when he thought nobody noticed and he has done it for months. So, trust me, him kissing you isn't unusual," he concluded, and Mara wasn't sure how to answer to that, so she remained silent.

The last few months felt like a dream to her, that he cared for her, almost too good to be true and she had been right. She could have known that he, of course, did not love her although his actions today and in recent weeks seemed to indicate something quite different. He had been to Leidal a couple of times and had threatened war if he did not see her, but he had not been granted access to the land at her request. He had written to her. He had sent his parents and Dante to convince her that there was a misunderstanding, but she had kindly yet sternly told them that she had no intention of ever returning.

When she had finished thinking about the past year, she thought about this day. The wedding had been beautiful, and it was nice to see her family and friends again. As mentioned earlier, Hermione and Ron were there, but so was her favourite cousin Harry who, after an earlier visit to Astella and Mara, had gotten on very well with both Draco and Dante, to which the latter promptly invited him to his wedding.

Yes, it had been a nice day and fortunately there had been no incidents between her and Draco and she had been able to avoid him generally until their conversation in the library and now...

It was strange to hear him sleeping next to her now. They hadn't done this often anyway, sleeping together, just when they wanted to use their new quarters the 'incident' happened, but it somehow felt familiar. Mara turned to look at him briefly and saw how his blonde locks fell across his face and how his chest rose and fell, and he was sleeping peacefully. She then turned back to her side but a moment later felt his arm wrap around her waist and draw him closer, his head positioned in her thick brown hair.

Her initial reaction was to try and remove his hand and push him away, but she felt his iron grip on her, so it was of little use. Mara sighed and closed her eyes to sleep.