The Winter Queen (RH/Why Choose, MM, MF, MFM, FF) ✅

Chapter Nine

Cyprian

I felt sick.

I would normally be apt to blame the food, the ale, or something of that nature. But I had not eaten anything at the feast.

So there was nothing to blame other than the truth.

I felt sick to my stomach that the king and queen were going to consummate their marriage.

I hated myself for those thoughts.

I was loyal to my king.

I cared for him much the way a son might care for his father.

I wanted nothing but the best for him.

Objectively, that was what Marielle was.

The best.

But I did not want him to have her. At least in that way.

Somehow, I could accept her being his queen in writing, in the eyes of the world. It would even be acceptable for them to be close, friendly.

But something inside of me drew the line at him putting his hands on her in a carnal way.

Then she came out of that bedroom in that nightgown that draped over the soft curves of her body, and I had never been more crestfallen that she was walking to my king and not to me.

Yet there was nothing I could do.

She was his.

It was his right.

It was not mine.

So I let her in the door.

I closed it.

And I tried not to think about what was going on behind it.

Though, of course, that was all that I could obsess over.

Until I heard my name called.

I was shocked I did not get sick all over my own feet as I opened that door, sure I was going to walk into something I never wanted to see.

But there the king was, in his chair by the fire, looking more tired than I had seen him in months. Understandably, given the day he had endured.

Then there was the queen, sitting off the side of the bed, looking confused and scared at the same time.

Those seemed to be valid feelings for a bride sitting alone on the bed on her wedding night, several yards away from her husband who seemed to have no interest in her beauty.

"I have a proposition," the king started, making my brows draw low. "No, a demand," the king clarified.

A demand?

The king rarely made demands of me. Requests, of course, since I was his caretaker, but rarely outright demands. That was not the dynamic we shared.

"What demand?" I asked, glancing over at Marielle again, concerned with her paleness and the way she was still trembling, despite trying to hold her body so tight that it could not move.

"I was just explaining something to my bride here that I have not shared with even you, or my physician, yet."

He had been keeping things from me? And his physician? To what end? We were the ones taking care of him.

"You know, sir, that your secrets are always quite safe with me," I assured him.

"I do. It has been more an issue of pride and embarrassment for me. But this has been a plan I have had in my mind for quite some time now. Since before my last queen passed," he said, making me even more confused.