Cassian looked to the brother he admired deeply. “I’ve missed you,” he said, looking around at his family as Julian came up to embrace him. “I’ve missed you all. It feels good to be home in the north again.”
“You can always come home, Cass,” Julian said, a glimmer in his eyes.
Cassian shrugged as if to concede the point. “I know,” he said. “And I will, someday, but right now, Peter and I are having grand adventures. I like it on the Marches.”
“And you like a certain young lady, too,” Jax said.
Cassian looked at his father sheepishly. “Brielle is on my mind, I admit it.”
He was speaking of Christopher’s second eldest daughter, a young lady he’d had his eye on since he first went to serve at Lioncross Abbey. That was the worst kept secret in both families.
“Get her out of your mind and into your bed, Cass,” Julian said as his mother hissed her disapproval. “I mean marry the woman. What are you waiting for?”
Jax put up a hand. “A conversation for another time,” he said. “Right now, we have games to attend or Addie and Gaia will have fits. Come with us, Cass.”
“I will,” he said. “But I must tell Lord Christopher that I will be with you this afternoon so he will not go searching for me. May… may I bring Brielle?”
Kellington latched on to his arm. “If you do not, I shall be very disappointed,” she said. “Tell Chris that I demand his daughter’s company this afternoon.”
Cassian grinned. “I was hoping you would say that,” he said, kissing her cheek swiftly. “I will find you in the lists!”
With that, he bolted off. Kellington watched him go, her eyes alight with the joy of seeing the son she seldom saw.
“He has grown so much,” she said, turning to Jax. “They are all growing up. Jax, I must have more grandchildren or I shall shrivel away.”
Jax started laughing. He pointed to Cole, Atlas, and, finally, Corisande with her enormously pregnant belly. “I am doing the best I can,” he said. “I cannot force them to have children any faster, you know.”
Kellington laughed softly, hugging her husband, the man her entire world revolved around, even to this day. That had never changed since the moment they’d fallen in love. Theirs was an unusual but powerful love story. But once she was finished squeezing Jax, she took Atlas from his father and hugged the baby, but Atlas didn’t want anything to do with her. He kicked so much that she had to set him on his feet, holding his little hands to help him balance.
“I’m finished with that dish,” Corisande said, rubbing her back because it pained her these days with the belly she had to balance. “I want something sweet, Cole.”
She’d barely gotten the words out of her mouth when Atlas broke free of his grandmother and started tearing down the avenue as only a toddler can. Kellington and Jax went in pursuit, chasing him down as he screamed. That disinterested Addington, Gaia, and Effington, who were already heading for the lists, and Julian was due to compete in the afternoon, so he turned for the castle to prepare.
That left Cole and Corisande watching Cole’s parents hunt down a skittish toddler. Cole put his arm around his wife’s shoulders as she leaned into him, drawing strength from his warmth and power as she always had.
“You know that he runs like that because of the way my father chases him,” she said, grinning when Jax finally grabbed the baby and swung him into the air. “And my brothers. Do you remember their last visit when they pretended that he was a wild boar and chased him all through the bailey, hunting him?”
Cole laughed at a particularly silly memory. Alastor and the three de Bourne brothers had come for a visit last month, but they’d turned into giddy fools around a baby who only wanted to run. It had been hilarious and shameful at the same time to watch grown men behave like that, but Cole had to admit he was guilty of it, too.
“I know,” he said. “But given how smart Atlas is, he will be escaping them in little time.”
“True,” Corisande said as she watched Jax kiss the cheek of the screaming baby. “Moments like this… they seem so surreal to me.”
He looked down at her. “Why?”
She shook her head, trying to put her feelings into words. “I don’t know, exactly,” she said. “I just feel like this is a dream. I’m living a dream I wasn’t sure I’d ever have.”
He smiled, kissing her on the top of the head. “You are the dream,” he murmured. “The best and richest dream a man could ever have, my queen.”
She met his smile, gazing up at the man she adored with her entire being. Cole de Velt had proven himself a wonderful husband, and exceptional father, and a fine and noble human being. He was everything she could have hoped for and more.
Their life at Berwick was magical. They were raising their family among the very fields and beaches that had seen turmoil from time to time, and would see again for centuries to come. Cole no longer went on missions for William Marshal, but The Marshal knew he could call upon him and his particular set of skills should he ever need him.
Once an Executioner Knight, always an Executioner Knight.
He would always be part of the brotherhood.
Even now, at this very tournament, he was surrounded by his Executioner Knight brethren – Maxton had come up from Gloucester with Christopher and David de Lohr, Achilles had come up from Hampshire, and Dashiell and Bric had arrived together. As the crowd in the lists roared, Addax and Essien beat down the competition, a fiery return of The Black Dragon and the God of Vengeance from their days of tournaments past. It was a joyful thing to watch, but there was change on the horizon. After this tournament, the Princes of Kitara would be heading to Lioncross Abbey to serve the man who had made it all possible for them, Christopher de Lohr.
Cole was sorry to see them go, but he understood.
Life was a constantly evolving thing.
At this moment, all that mattered to him was his family and the vast and compelling love story between him and his wife that continued to grow. Two people who had once been unlucky in relationships and had suffered through their own private heartbreak finally found a love for the ages in each other.
It had been a journey, though. Cole had learned that women were often far braver than men were, in ways he could have never imagined. Corisande never knew that he was aware of Gaia’s sacrifice because that was the way Gaia wanted it, and it gave Cole such a deep and abiding respect for his wife’s sister even though she never did learn not to pinch. She lived with them at Berwick these days, but he didn’t mind.
Anything she wanted to do was fine by him.
For her part, Corisande had learned that not all men broke their word. Faith was something that she had in Cole, something that would never waver. It was faith and love that only multiplied when their beautiful son, Ajax, was born healthy two months later.
The circle of life continued and from time to time, Cole thought on Mary and Lucy. He knew that wherever they were, they were smiling down upon him because they’d been his first lesson in unconditional love.
It was a lesson he’d learned well.
I did not understand that true love is absolute. It knows no limitations, no boundaries. And this is true love.
For Cole and Corisande, it was.