Written in the Stars
By Misha
Disclaimer- Not mine. I don’t own any of the characters of The Crown and the Flame. I’m just borrowing them for a little while and will return them unharmed when I am done.
Author’s Notes- I was in a little bit of an angsty mood and this popped into my mind. It’s a scenario where Kenna marries someone other than Diavolos and is then widowed. I never identify her spouse (except as male), so you can decide who you think it is. This was based on the dialogue prompts “Sometimes I wish I could just close my eyes and go back to the way we were.”, “You are the one I want.”, “What do you want from me?” “The truth.”, “You haunt me” and “will you marry me”.
Pairing- Kenna/Diavolos, minor Kenna/?
Rating- PG-13
Summary- Five years ago, Kenna had let Diavolos go and married someone else, now she was a widow and he had returned to see if the moment was finally right for them.
Words- 1223
“Your majesty.”
“King Diavolos,” Kenna said with a genuine smile. It had been five years since she had seen Diavolos, not since her wedding.
He took her hand and brought it to his lips. “You are as beautiful as I remember.”
“And you are just as charming as I remember,” she replied, her eyes lingering on his face.
Then someone else called her name and Diavolos slipped away. Kenna made small talk with the various nobles, but as the hours passed, her eyes kept lingering on Diavolos. She couldn’t keep her eyes off of him, five years hadn’t changed that.
But then five years hadn’t changed anything. One look from him still made her heart race and her breath catch in her throat. She still wanted him.
Finally, she couldn’t take it any longer and she crossed the room to where he was standing.
“Walk with me?” She asked him.
He nodded and together they slipped out of the Great Hall and then out of the castle altogether.
“Why did you come now?” Kenna asked quietly once they were outside. “You’ve stayed away for five years.”
“You know why I stayed away,” Diavolos said in a low voice, “It was bad enough that I had to attend your wedding, the idea of watching you with someone else… Seeing how happy you were. I couldn’t do it.”
“Diavolos…”
“And then I thought you needed time to grieve,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “so I gave you a year and I came now, because… Because I love you, Kenna Rys. I loved you five years ago and I still love you now. You haunt me. The memory of that one night we spent together haunts me. I can still remember how you felt, how you tasted, the way you came apart in my arms.”
“It haunts me too,” Kenna admitted, “Sometimes I wish I could just close my eyes and go back to the way we were, to that night in the grass…”
“And do what?” Diavolos asked her quietly, placing his hand on her back. “Would you stop yourself from going with me that night or from marrying him?”
“I don’t know,” Kenna told him honestly. “I loved…”
“I know,” Diavolos said, cutting her off, “I know you did and I know that you miss him.”
“Yes,” Kenna said softly, her eyes clouding at the memory of her painful loss. She looked at him. “What are we doing here? What do you want from me?”
“The truth. I want you to say that you loved me too.”
“Of course I did,” Kenna told him. “How can you doubt that?”
But she knew the answer to that because she had chosen to marry someone else. It was hard to reconcile her love for him with the choice she had made. It had been hard for her and she was the one who had made the decision.
“I loved you,” she said after a moment, “so much it scared me. I met you and I wanted you. It didn’t matter what your last name was, what your father tried to do, none of it. I wanted to throw everything away and just be with you. But… I couldn’t do that.”
She looked up at the starry sky. Some people claimed that some things were written in the stars, meant to happen. But those people weren’t Queen. That had been her dilemma five years ago, whether she trusted fate or duty.
“None of my friends trusted you,” she reminded him, “I had advisors telling me that it was a mistake to back your claim to Abanthus, I can only imagine how they would have reacted if I had tried to make you King of Stormholt. But maybe I would have tried, except I had already made a promise. I had built a relationship, over much longer than the course of a few weeks, and I couldn’t walk away from that.”
“I know.” There was no condemnation in his voice, no anger. “Five years ago, I knew you couldn’t be mine. The fact that I got that one night was more than I expected.” He told her, cupping her face in one of his hands, the other still resting on her back. “I cursed fate, I cursed Father and his actions, but I never blamed you, except maybe for making me love you.”
“You made me love you too,” she whispered, “I never wanted to. I only want to love…”
She trailed off, thinking of her husband. She’d had a good marriage. She had done her best to push aside her love for Diavolos and concentrate on her love for the man she’d married and the four years they’d had together had been happy ones. Maybe she hadn’t loved him with the same intense, consuming love she’d felt for Diavolos, but she’d still loved him deeply and there had also been a deep friendship there and shared experiences. It had been the right kind of love to build a life together. But then that life had been cut short.
“Why did you come here?” She asked again after a moment.
“I told you, I came here for you.” He looked directly into her eyes. “It wasn’t the right time for us five years ago, but maybe it is now. I think I’ve proven myself to be more than my father’s son and I can’t imagine your advisors would object to a union between us now.”
She knew he was right. In five years, Diavolos had done a remarkable job of restoring the Nevrakis name and making amends for his father’s actions. No one would criticize her choice now or question her decision to give him even more power.
“You said you loved me then,” he continued, “but do you love me now?”
Kenna thought about it for a moment. Did she? She thought of the way her heart had raced at the sight of him, the way the pressure of his hand on her back made her skin tingle, and just how right it felt to be here with him.
“Yes.”
A look of triumph appeared on his face and a second later, his mouth was covering hers. Kenna kissed him back eagerly. Surprised by how familiar his kiss felt. How right.
“I love you,” he whispered against her lips.
“I love you,” she assured him, clinging to him.
He pulled back slightly but kept his hand on her waist. “Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” Kenna said simply, “five years ago it wasn’t the right time for us, but now it is. You are the one I want to spend the rest of my life with.”
Or at least as long as they were given. She knew some people might talk, might whisper about the fact that she was re-marrying after only a year and to a man she’d seen for the first time in five years. Maybe they’d speculate about the past. But she didn’t care.
She had let Diavolos go once and it had been the right choice, but for whatever reason, they had been given a second chance and she wasn’t going to let it go. As the stars twinkled above them, Kenna thought about fate once more and the idea that maybe some things really were written in the stars.
- End
