The Long Shot (6/6) [Balthier/Ashe; NC-17]
Title: The Long Shot (6/6)
Author: chaineddove
Fandom: Final Fantasy XII
Rating: NC-17 due to one scene in a previous chapter
Genre: Romance
Pairing: Balthier/Ashe
Wordcount: 2,664
Disclaimer: I don't own FFXII (well, I do own a copy for my PS2...).
Authors' Notes: Today was my last day at the Job From Hell, and this is the last chapter of our tale. Hallelujah. By the way, for those interested, and per request from my beta, there will be a brief epilogue posted tomorrow. ♥
In this chapter, we get both points of view, Larsa makes a gamble, Balthier makes a decision, and..... well, I did promise a happy ending, didn't I?
”It’s a long shot, but I said why not,
If I say forget it, I know that I’ll regret it,
It’s a long shot just to beat these odds,
The chance is we won’t make it,
But I know if I don’t take it, there’s no chance,
'Cause you’re the best I got…”
-Kelly Clarkson, “Long Shot”
Chapter 6
“I never thought that you would be the one to hold my heart,
But you came around and you knocked me off the ground from the start,
You put your arms around me,
And I believe that it’s easier for you to let me go,
You put your arms around me and I’m home.”
-Christina Perri, “Arms”
***
Trouble with the auxiliary engine has him stranded in the far reaches of the Ogir-Yensa Sandsea for the second week running; it is nigh impossible to bribe a decent mechanic into making the trip out here, and so they make do, somehow, jerry-rigging the thing with what tools and knowledge the two of them possess. Fortunately, things seem to be on the right track at last; the Strahl’s engine purrs healthily as he runs a final diagnostic, and he is fairly sure that he will, at least, manage to get her as far as Rabanastre safely, where he will then have an excuse to linger for a few days while he waits to obtain the necessary part to eliminate the problem.
Fran enters the engine room with a stack of papers in her hand; he gives her an inquisitive look, and she tells him, “Mail.”
“Lovely, so now we get the moogles out here,” he grouses. “Where the blazes were they when we needed them?”
She shrugs and replies, “I believe the sender likely paid uncommonly well.” Her expression is carefully blank as she tosses him a cloth to wipe his hands of engine grease, and then two envelopes, one thick and sealed with the crest of house Solidor, one slim and unmarked. “Shall I leave you?” Fran inquires.
“Why would you -” He turns the large envelope over. In the neat, precise hand of a professional scribe, it is addressed to Lord Ffamran Bunansa. He curses, fluently and with feeling, for at least a solid minute. “That manipulative little weasel didn’t.” He rips it open with no regard for the seal, which cracks neatly in two, and reads.
My Lord,
We regretfully remind you that the Emperor’s patience is finite, and the three years of back taxes owed by your family will be taken out of your estate at the turn of the year if you do not come forward promptly to reclaim your lands and repay your debts to the great Archadian Empire.
It continues in this fashion for several pages, listing his supposed assets as well as all fines and fees to be levied against him if he does not comply with the Empire’s requirements, and ends with a veiled threat that despite the gracious pardon of his family’s war crimes, he may yet lose his title if he continues his pattern of neglect and avoidance. His eyebrows are surely near his hairline by the time he has finished with the accounting, and he cannot fathom what the Emperor could be playing at. There is a small note at the bottom of the page in Larsa’s unmistakably elegant hand: Think, before you refuse.
“The power has actually gone to his head,” he mutters. “He’s as mad as his brother.” He supposes he will have to stay away from Archades long enough to miss the deadline, though he cannot help wondering exactly how the Emperor assumes this threat could possibly work, when he has made it clear on multiple occasions that he is not the least bit interested in anything left behind in the old man’s wake.
That is when he remembers the second letter, the slim envelope of creamy, expensive parchment, with the corners bent out of shape just so, a sign which tells him exactly who penned the short note inside. I take great risks with this missive, but I pray only that it reaches your hands before you have heard this news from another quarter; recent history considered, I cannot imagine that such a misunderstanding could end well for either of us. In truth, such tidings should be delivered directly, but under the pressures of time and my untimely frailty, I beg your forgiveness in advance and hope only that you will come to hear me out…
It is not a long letter, but it seems to take him an eternity to read it, perhaps because he must stop to force air into his lungs. It is as though the words on the page are in a language he does not quite understand; he stares at them as though they will become something more comprehensible any moment, but comprehension does not come. He does not notice Fran’s approach until she kneels on the floor across to him. He can feel her hand on his cheek through a sort of haze, but nothing is registering as it ought. If the things you have said to me are true, if indeed you love me as I love you, beyond the realm of all reason and practicality, then I beg you to come to me now, and we will see if we can, perhaps, change our fate. What is a man meant to say to a plea such as this from a woman such as her? He feels a little as he did at his choice to remain on the Bahamut, knowing he risked death in order to give her a gift, one last act by which she could remember him kindly. It had seemed, at the time, simple, even inevitable.
“Do we set course for Rabanastre?” Fran asks after a few long minutes of silence. She is calm, collected, unruffled; he thinks she likely already knows what he will choose, and he envies her this simple gift of acceptance. Nothing upsets Fran for long.
“No,” he tells her. His voice seems tinny to his own ears. “We make first for Archades.” The decision, it appears, is easy enough after all.
***
His epistles are always brief, when he bothers to send them at all, but this is the shortest she has ever received: I will arrive as soon as I am able. Stay well in the meantime. It is thoroughly cryptic - he makes no mention of her letter at all, and from the one brief line of text she cannot even discern whether or not he is angry with her - but she takes it as a good sign. Even if he is coming only to claim the fight he promised her, well, they have fought several hundred times in their acquaintance, and although she finds herself less in control of her emotions than usual, these days, she thinks she will not lose. And so she folds the paper over and over until it is small enough to tuck away into her bodice, and allows its presence there to give her courage.
It is fortunate that she is once again too busy to allow for long periods of introspection or worry. She refills her granary with a purchase from the Rozarrian surplus, allowing herself to be ever-so-slightly overcharged; as a subtle apology, it is not particularly strong, but it keeps discord at bay, at least for now. At the very least, the Rozarrian ambassador does not depart Rabanastre in a huff, even if he does avoid her company, pointedly, for the better part of a month after the news is made public.
She supervises the laying of the foundation for her Academy in the part of the city which is only now being rebuilt from the wreckage of the war. She reviews a proposal for a new trade agreement with the Archadian Empire which includes several uncommonly favorable concessions that she has been seeking for the last year; she also receives a note from Larsa by courier which reads only, Well played. She shakes her head, but sends back her cordial acceptance to begin talks within the month - something else to fit into her chaotic winter schedule, but she does not intend to squander the Emperor’s generosity.
Public opinion seems not to have deteriorated to the extent expected by the more pessimistic members of her council; if anything, she appears to be more popular than ever, which serves to cement her feeling that all in all, regardless of what may happen in her personal life, she has still done the right thing. The prospect of an heir has been greeted joyously by most - she is showered with all manner of incomprehensible gifts, and when she receives a minute silver rattle from a very uncomfortable Lord Azelas, she knows that the storm has passed. Penelo mails her a tiny blanket embroidered with lopsided chocobo chicks, clearly sewn by hand; it is both absurd and absurdly touching, and she finds herself nearly weeping over the silly thing for no apparent reason. As one week fades into another, she tries not to worry, applying herself instead to necessary day-to-day tasks of ruling her country, preparing for the impending arrival of her Archadian guests, and attempting not to lose her breakfast on a daily basis.
She sets a discreet watch on the aerodrome, but no familiar ship docks. Then, just as she is about ready to send out a search, he appears - sauntering into her throne room, perfectly at ease, with the other members of the Archadian delegation - and all that she can think, once her hands have flown to her mouth to stifle an exclamation of shock, is that the man still knows how to make an entrance.
***
After the extremely entertaining - and short - audience, during which he struggles not to laugh at her clear bewilderment, she is pulled away by one of her councilors, and he splits from the rest of the delegation to sneak past the lone guard at her door and pick the lock. Oh, he supposes he can now walk the halls with relative impunity, but he is not yet known here, people are bound to talk, and in any case, perhaps certain traditions need to be preserved.
When she arrives and sees him sprawled on her sitting room couch, the look on her face is almost worth the extremely high price he has paid to be here. “I cannot keep up with you,” she mutters as she shuts the door behind her. “What are you doing here?”
“Now, that sounds familiar.” Though his eyes are drawn to her midriff, her gown is draped in such a way that he cannot tell that anything has changed. Still, she looks different - not quite so thin as the last time he saw her, her carefully styled hair a touch longer than he is accustomed to under its coronet - though the mix of exasperation and relief in her eyes as she looks at him is exactly the same as always. He rises and goes to her side, cupping her cheek in one hand as she glares at him. A knot in his stomach, which he was not aware of possessing prior to this moment, loosens. “But I’m semi-reformed, I promise; did you not invite me here yourself?”
She shakes her head, incredulity writ plain on her features. “Strangely, at the moment, it is not your presence here, in my quarters, that I am questioning, Ambassador.”
He cannot help wincing; her tone is perfectly matched to Larsa’s - Well, if that is the best you will agree to, Ambassador, I suppose I cannot dissuade you. - and so instead of answering her question, he tells her: “I thought you invited me here to apologize.”
Far from penitent, she glares at him. “I wrote you two months ago -”
“The paperwork was extensive,” he tells her with a grimace. “Archadian bureaucracy knows no equal.”
“- And instead of answering me,” she continues, clearly settling into her temper, “you have apparently decided to take matters into your own hands - a decision I cannot, for the life of me, comprehend!” She looks dangerously near tears.
“Our mutual friend, the Emperor of Archadia, seems to think that you planned this,” he says by way of response. “Did you?”
Her eyes grow wide. “No, I - no. It is only that… it is complicated.”
His narrow. “So,” he says. “I take that to mean that he was correct in his assumption.”
“You told me not to say anything!” she explodes. “In fact, you expressly forbade it!”
“You’ve never listened to me before,” he points out. “Whatever possessed you to start then?”
“You did not have the look of a man willing to listen to reason,” she says venomously.
“This,” he points out, “is not the standard definition of an apology, Ashelia.”
“Who says this is an apology? It barely even qualifies as an explanation.” Throwing her hands up in surrender, she turns away from him and stalks to the window. “Oh, you make it impossible to think sensibly. I had hoped to speak with you before…”
“And if I had refused?” he queries, following her; he puts his hands on her shoulders, and she rests her cheek against his fingers for a moment. “Did you even consider that?” Her reflection in the glass looks tired and careworn. The anger fades.
“I would have convinced you,” she murmurs. “It was the only way that I could see. I was prepared to fight with you about it.”
“I do believe we are covering that ground right now,” he says with a dry chuckle.
“I asked you to come, Balthier, but not to make demands of you,” she responds, leaning her forehead against the glass. “If you are angry - and you’ve every right to be angry, certainly, even if it is as much your fault as mine - then be angry. But I never asked you to bargain your freedom away for me. You’ve no responsibility to me, if you do not wish it.”
“I do not know whether to be touched or insulted,” he tells her. “What I have done has little to do with responsibility, or my freedom; I have taken on little of the first and have retained a great deal of the second. I have told you before - I have no desire to be king; this will not change that, nor would anyone consider the prodigal son of a war criminal a suitable match for a queen, any more than they would consider a pirate. My duties to the Archadian court, such as they are, include only minor involvement in international politics and occasional courier work - I am barely a glorified messenger, with large spans of time to call my own, and little supervision by the crown.” He shrugs nonchalantly, as though it hadn’t come to shouts and threats, behind the locked door of the Emperor’s office, to strike this accord. “But it does offer a convenient excuse to spend at least some of those large spans of time here, all without raising anyone’s suspicions. Frankly, I can sit through a few dinner parties a year, and I assure you, neither your kingdom nor my sense of self will suffer for it.”
“But it wasn’t necessary,” she protests.
“Wasn’t it?” he asks. It takes only gentle pressure to turn her to face him. He runs his thumb over her bottom lip, watching the warmth come into her eyes, and says, “I thought I would meet you halfway. Beyond the realm of all reason and practicality, is that not what you said?”
For the first time since she entered the room, she smiles - a hesitant, hopeful expression. “Yes,” she says. “That is what I said.”
“Then, assuming you still refuse to come away with me -”
She laughs, and tells him, “I think not, pirate.”
“Alas, but one cannot blame a man for trying,” he says with a fatalistic shrug. “I will not make you promises I cannot keep, but, as you once so aptly put it, I am here, now.” He grins. “Besides, how will my child ever learn to handle an airship if I am not here to teach him? Your pilots, Your Majesty, leave something to be desired.”
“The healers think it will be a girl,” she tells him.
“Ah, well, I can be progressive,” he responds with a shrug. “May the gods help us all; I hope she doesn’t inherit your temper.”
“And I hope she doesn’t inherit your hair,” the queen parries. “I haven’t any idea how I would explain that.”
He is laughing as he pulls her against him in an embrace that has been long overdue.
Epilogue
Author: chaineddove
Fandom: Final Fantasy XII
Rating: NC-17 due to one scene in a previous chapter
Genre: Romance
Pairing: Balthier/Ashe
Wordcount: 2,664
Disclaimer: I don't own FFXII (well, I do own a copy for my PS2...).
Authors' Notes: Today was my last day at the Job From Hell, and this is the last chapter of our tale. Hallelujah. By the way, for those interested, and per request from my beta, there will be a brief epilogue posted tomorrow. ♥
In this chapter, we get both points of view, Larsa makes a gamble, Balthier makes a decision, and..... well, I did promise a happy ending, didn't I?
”It’s a long shot, but I said why not,
If I say forget it, I know that I’ll regret it,
It’s a long shot just to beat these odds,
The chance is we won’t make it,
But I know if I don’t take it, there’s no chance,
'Cause you’re the best I got…”
-Kelly Clarkson, “Long Shot”
Chapter 6
“I never thought that you would be the one to hold my heart,
But you came around and you knocked me off the ground from the start,
You put your arms around me,
And I believe that it’s easier for you to let me go,
You put your arms around me and I’m home.”
-Christina Perri, “Arms”
***
Trouble with the auxiliary engine has him stranded in the far reaches of the Ogir-Yensa Sandsea for the second week running; it is nigh impossible to bribe a decent mechanic into making the trip out here, and so they make do, somehow, jerry-rigging the thing with what tools and knowledge the two of them possess. Fortunately, things seem to be on the right track at last; the Strahl’s engine purrs healthily as he runs a final diagnostic, and he is fairly sure that he will, at least, manage to get her as far as Rabanastre safely, where he will then have an excuse to linger for a few days while he waits to obtain the necessary part to eliminate the problem.
Fran enters the engine room with a stack of papers in her hand; he gives her an inquisitive look, and she tells him, “Mail.”
“Lovely, so now we get the moogles out here,” he grouses. “Where the blazes were they when we needed them?”
She shrugs and replies, “I believe the sender likely paid uncommonly well.” Her expression is carefully blank as she tosses him a cloth to wipe his hands of engine grease, and then two envelopes, one thick and sealed with the crest of house Solidor, one slim and unmarked. “Shall I leave you?” Fran inquires.
“Why would you -” He turns the large envelope over. In the neat, precise hand of a professional scribe, it is addressed to Lord Ffamran Bunansa. He curses, fluently and with feeling, for at least a solid minute. “That manipulative little weasel didn’t.” He rips it open with no regard for the seal, which cracks neatly in two, and reads.
My Lord,
We regretfully remind you that the Emperor’s patience is finite, and the three years of back taxes owed by your family will be taken out of your estate at the turn of the year if you do not come forward promptly to reclaim your lands and repay your debts to the great Archadian Empire.
It continues in this fashion for several pages, listing his supposed assets as well as all fines and fees to be levied against him if he does not comply with the Empire’s requirements, and ends with a veiled threat that despite the gracious pardon of his family’s war crimes, he may yet lose his title if he continues his pattern of neglect and avoidance. His eyebrows are surely near his hairline by the time he has finished with the accounting, and he cannot fathom what the Emperor could be playing at. There is a small note at the bottom of the page in Larsa’s unmistakably elegant hand: Think, before you refuse.
“The power has actually gone to his head,” he mutters. “He’s as mad as his brother.” He supposes he will have to stay away from Archades long enough to miss the deadline, though he cannot help wondering exactly how the Emperor assumes this threat could possibly work, when he has made it clear on multiple occasions that he is not the least bit interested in anything left behind in the old man’s wake.
That is when he remembers the second letter, the slim envelope of creamy, expensive parchment, with the corners bent out of shape just so, a sign which tells him exactly who penned the short note inside. I take great risks with this missive, but I pray only that it reaches your hands before you have heard this news from another quarter; recent history considered, I cannot imagine that such a misunderstanding could end well for either of us. In truth, such tidings should be delivered directly, but under the pressures of time and my untimely frailty, I beg your forgiveness in advance and hope only that you will come to hear me out…
It is not a long letter, but it seems to take him an eternity to read it, perhaps because he must stop to force air into his lungs. It is as though the words on the page are in a language he does not quite understand; he stares at them as though they will become something more comprehensible any moment, but comprehension does not come. He does not notice Fran’s approach until she kneels on the floor across to him. He can feel her hand on his cheek through a sort of haze, but nothing is registering as it ought. If the things you have said to me are true, if indeed you love me as I love you, beyond the realm of all reason and practicality, then I beg you to come to me now, and we will see if we can, perhaps, change our fate. What is a man meant to say to a plea such as this from a woman such as her? He feels a little as he did at his choice to remain on the Bahamut, knowing he risked death in order to give her a gift, one last act by which she could remember him kindly. It had seemed, at the time, simple, even inevitable.
“Do we set course for Rabanastre?” Fran asks after a few long minutes of silence. She is calm, collected, unruffled; he thinks she likely already knows what he will choose, and he envies her this simple gift of acceptance. Nothing upsets Fran for long.
“No,” he tells her. His voice seems tinny to his own ears. “We make first for Archades.” The decision, it appears, is easy enough after all.
***
His epistles are always brief, when he bothers to send them at all, but this is the shortest she has ever received: I will arrive as soon as I am able. Stay well in the meantime. It is thoroughly cryptic - he makes no mention of her letter at all, and from the one brief line of text she cannot even discern whether or not he is angry with her - but she takes it as a good sign. Even if he is coming only to claim the fight he promised her, well, they have fought several hundred times in their acquaintance, and although she finds herself less in control of her emotions than usual, these days, she thinks she will not lose. And so she folds the paper over and over until it is small enough to tuck away into her bodice, and allows its presence there to give her courage.
It is fortunate that she is once again too busy to allow for long periods of introspection or worry. She refills her granary with a purchase from the Rozarrian surplus, allowing herself to be ever-so-slightly overcharged; as a subtle apology, it is not particularly strong, but it keeps discord at bay, at least for now. At the very least, the Rozarrian ambassador does not depart Rabanastre in a huff, even if he does avoid her company, pointedly, for the better part of a month after the news is made public.
She supervises the laying of the foundation for her Academy in the part of the city which is only now being rebuilt from the wreckage of the war. She reviews a proposal for a new trade agreement with the Archadian Empire which includes several uncommonly favorable concessions that she has been seeking for the last year; she also receives a note from Larsa by courier which reads only, Well played. She shakes her head, but sends back her cordial acceptance to begin talks within the month - something else to fit into her chaotic winter schedule, but she does not intend to squander the Emperor’s generosity.
Public opinion seems not to have deteriorated to the extent expected by the more pessimistic members of her council; if anything, she appears to be more popular than ever, which serves to cement her feeling that all in all, regardless of what may happen in her personal life, she has still done the right thing. The prospect of an heir has been greeted joyously by most - she is showered with all manner of incomprehensible gifts, and when she receives a minute silver rattle from a very uncomfortable Lord Azelas, she knows that the storm has passed. Penelo mails her a tiny blanket embroidered with lopsided chocobo chicks, clearly sewn by hand; it is both absurd and absurdly touching, and she finds herself nearly weeping over the silly thing for no apparent reason. As one week fades into another, she tries not to worry, applying herself instead to necessary day-to-day tasks of ruling her country, preparing for the impending arrival of her Archadian guests, and attempting not to lose her breakfast on a daily basis.
She sets a discreet watch on the aerodrome, but no familiar ship docks. Then, just as she is about ready to send out a search, he appears - sauntering into her throne room, perfectly at ease, with the other members of the Archadian delegation - and all that she can think, once her hands have flown to her mouth to stifle an exclamation of shock, is that the man still knows how to make an entrance.
***
After the extremely entertaining - and short - audience, during which he struggles not to laugh at her clear bewilderment, she is pulled away by one of her councilors, and he splits from the rest of the delegation to sneak past the lone guard at her door and pick the lock. Oh, he supposes he can now walk the halls with relative impunity, but he is not yet known here, people are bound to talk, and in any case, perhaps certain traditions need to be preserved.
When she arrives and sees him sprawled on her sitting room couch, the look on her face is almost worth the extremely high price he has paid to be here. “I cannot keep up with you,” she mutters as she shuts the door behind her. “What are you doing here?”
“Now, that sounds familiar.” Though his eyes are drawn to her midriff, her gown is draped in such a way that he cannot tell that anything has changed. Still, she looks different - not quite so thin as the last time he saw her, her carefully styled hair a touch longer than he is accustomed to under its coronet - though the mix of exasperation and relief in her eyes as she looks at him is exactly the same as always. He rises and goes to her side, cupping her cheek in one hand as she glares at him. A knot in his stomach, which he was not aware of possessing prior to this moment, loosens. “But I’m semi-reformed, I promise; did you not invite me here yourself?”
She shakes her head, incredulity writ plain on her features. “Strangely, at the moment, it is not your presence here, in my quarters, that I am questioning, Ambassador.”
He cannot help wincing; her tone is perfectly matched to Larsa’s - Well, if that is the best you will agree to, Ambassador, I suppose I cannot dissuade you. - and so instead of answering her question, he tells her: “I thought you invited me here to apologize.”
Far from penitent, she glares at him. “I wrote you two months ago -”
“The paperwork was extensive,” he tells her with a grimace. “Archadian bureaucracy knows no equal.”
“- And instead of answering me,” she continues, clearly settling into her temper, “you have apparently decided to take matters into your own hands - a decision I cannot, for the life of me, comprehend!” She looks dangerously near tears.
“Our mutual friend, the Emperor of Archadia, seems to think that you planned this,” he says by way of response. “Did you?”
Her eyes grow wide. “No, I - no. It is only that… it is complicated.”
His narrow. “So,” he says. “I take that to mean that he was correct in his assumption.”
“You told me not to say anything!” she explodes. “In fact, you expressly forbade it!”
“You’ve never listened to me before,” he points out. “Whatever possessed you to start then?”
“You did not have the look of a man willing to listen to reason,” she says venomously.
“This,” he points out, “is not the standard definition of an apology, Ashelia.”
“Who says this is an apology? It barely even qualifies as an explanation.” Throwing her hands up in surrender, she turns away from him and stalks to the window. “Oh, you make it impossible to think sensibly. I had hoped to speak with you before…”
“And if I had refused?” he queries, following her; he puts his hands on her shoulders, and she rests her cheek against his fingers for a moment. “Did you even consider that?” Her reflection in the glass looks tired and careworn. The anger fades.
“I would have convinced you,” she murmurs. “It was the only way that I could see. I was prepared to fight with you about it.”
“I do believe we are covering that ground right now,” he says with a dry chuckle.
“I asked you to come, Balthier, but not to make demands of you,” she responds, leaning her forehead against the glass. “If you are angry - and you’ve every right to be angry, certainly, even if it is as much your fault as mine - then be angry. But I never asked you to bargain your freedom away for me. You’ve no responsibility to me, if you do not wish it.”
“I do not know whether to be touched or insulted,” he tells her. “What I have done has little to do with responsibility, or my freedom; I have taken on little of the first and have retained a great deal of the second. I have told you before - I have no desire to be king; this will not change that, nor would anyone consider the prodigal son of a war criminal a suitable match for a queen, any more than they would consider a pirate. My duties to the Archadian court, such as they are, include only minor involvement in international politics and occasional courier work - I am barely a glorified messenger, with large spans of time to call my own, and little supervision by the crown.” He shrugs nonchalantly, as though it hadn’t come to shouts and threats, behind the locked door of the Emperor’s office, to strike this accord. “But it does offer a convenient excuse to spend at least some of those large spans of time here, all without raising anyone’s suspicions. Frankly, I can sit through a few dinner parties a year, and I assure you, neither your kingdom nor my sense of self will suffer for it.”
“But it wasn’t necessary,” she protests.
“Wasn’t it?” he asks. It takes only gentle pressure to turn her to face him. He runs his thumb over her bottom lip, watching the warmth come into her eyes, and says, “I thought I would meet you halfway. Beyond the realm of all reason and practicality, is that not what you said?”
For the first time since she entered the room, she smiles - a hesitant, hopeful expression. “Yes,” she says. “That is what I said.”
“Then, assuming you still refuse to come away with me -”
She laughs, and tells him, “I think not, pirate.”
“Alas, but one cannot blame a man for trying,” he says with a fatalistic shrug. “I will not make you promises I cannot keep, but, as you once so aptly put it, I am here, now.” He grins. “Besides, how will my child ever learn to handle an airship if I am not here to teach him? Your pilots, Your Majesty, leave something to be desired.”
“The healers think it will be a girl,” she tells him.
“Ah, well, I can be progressive,” he responds with a shrug. “May the gods help us all; I hope she doesn’t inherit your temper.”
“And I hope she doesn’t inherit your hair,” the queen parries. “I haven’t any idea how I would explain that.”
He is laughing as he pulls her against him in an embrace that has been long overdue.
Epilogue