Emilie of the Royal Heart

Chapter 68: The End

 "This is a marvelous statue!" Emberly Edmunska mused, walking about the Prince's reception room, "is that what he really looks like, Li?"

Emilie choked on her own tongue. She covered her mouth with her hand in absolute embarrassment, squeaking out between her fingers, "that's not a statue, mom. That's him."

Aurora's eyes stayed pinned out in front of him and he stayed stock-still with his arms folded behind his back, but the corner of his mouth twitched. To Emilie's horror, her mother leaned in and squinted to scrutinize his features as though she didn't believe he was alive.

"I am honored to finally meet you, Mrs. Edmunska," Aurora proclaimed with a raspy chuckle that was so divorced from any sound that Emilie ever heard previously leave his mouth that she reached a hand out to his shoulder to check that he was alright.

"Oh!" her mother crowed, leaping backward. She pressed a hand over her heart, cinnamon-speckled cocoa colored eyes sweeping over to Emilie before they darted back to Aurora, "oh! I apologize, your highness. I am used to tree trunks standing stiff like that and nothing else. And I should say I am more honored to meet you! When we were parted and I thought her gone, I had never dreamed I would find her alive, let alone engaged to royalty!"

"It wasn't as simple as all that," Emilie insisted, awkwardly clicking her teeth together, "our love took a rather convoluted path..."

"How was your journey from the border?" Aurora inquired.

"Oh, well, besides that crazy woman knight throwing me in a sack and bumping me around in the back of the wagon for a week? She only told me I'd be disguised as potatoes -not thrown around like them!" Emberly huffed.

"I'm very sorry we couldn't arrange your formal passage across the border," he said with eyebrows drawn in, "the Emperor approached the Zuhian government several times, and he was very gracious to do so in the first place, but your authorities are rather set on not losing anymore refugees to Fellen..."

It had been a terrible nightmare when they traveled to the Western Palace to ask Elias to talk to the head of the Zuhian regime for them. Aurora had been trying for weeks, but they would barely spare him a message to say that they would not speak with him about border policy. Emilie and Aurora's engagement -their real engagement- had been announced the week before. Emilie was more eager than ever to have her mother with her during this time and she tried to hide it, but Aurora knew she missed her dearly. So, he convinced her that they could talk to Elias.

"Some time has passed," he told her, clasping her hands in his. He knelt at her armchair, "it won't be the easiest thing in the world, but he will have recovered a bit. Both of us are going to have to see him again eventually and he will have to see us eventually in turn. Now is as good a time as any to mend our relations."

"I heard from Lady Christina that when Elias returned to his palace he was not seen sober for a week and a half," she whispered. She hated to picture it -the state she may have left him in. Her guilt and empathy fought each other, her whole body the battlefield, her mind coated in its war.

Aurora sighed and rested his forehead against her knees, "those are rumors. Lady Christina isn't the most accurate source, don't you agree?"

"You don't know what..." she drifted off. She didn't want him to mistake her assertion for some hidden, secret passion that still lingered inside her for Elias. She loved Aurora. She wanted to marry him. Before, she had her romance and her fun with Elias, but that wasn't who she chose and it wouldn't be who she would choose given a second test.

"What?" Aurora challenged. There it was. Emilie knew he would take it the wrong way.

"Just that... you don't know what Elias said to me. You don't know how much he felt for me. I suppose... I don't know all of that either, but... he... was... determined, Rory. He fought for me just as much as you did. How would you feel if I had chosen Elias instead? I think that could be how much he has been suffering since I rejected him."