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"Have fun, you two!"
Claude looked up from loading the last of Pasha's saddlebags at his mother's call. She stood above him and Lysithea on the balcony overlooking the courtyard, dawn light sparkling in the diadem on her brow.
"I'm shocked you're awake," he called back, buckling the saddlebag flap shut and giving Pasha a pat. "What about His Majesty?"
His mother rolled her eyes and glanced over her shoulder at the darkened bedroom behind her, separated from the balcony by only a few wooden screens and fluttering curtains. "He wouldn't wake up before nine if all of Fodlan depended on it."
Ahead, Pasha dropped her great white head to the tiled courtyard floor and let out a mournful noise, leading to Claude's favorite sound in the world:
"Claude," said Lysithea around a yawn from where she'd already buckled herself in on Pasha. She rubbed at one of her eyes, and aw, she'd managed to fall asleep for a bit while Claude fussed over Pasha. "We need to go if we want to beat full sun on our way."
"Right as always." Lysithea always reminded him just when he needed it. He lifted a hand to wave goodbye to his mother, then placed his boot on Pasha's foreleg and vaulted up into the saddle. He'd deliberately placed Lysithea in front of him, the better to have her delightful body pressed back against his, and she took a breath as his legs settled on the outside of hers. He almost wanted to prop his chin on the top of her head, just for old times, but Lysithea would have no issue making him suffer for it. "Goodbye, mother!"
"Don't forget to write," she called back.
"We will," Lysithea said, a little acerbic in the way Claude both adored and was still slightly frightened by. "Pasha, go!"
Pasha blinked once, slowly, and then at Claude's call, rose and settled back onto her haunches, the leather of her harness creaking with the motion. Her wings snapped open with a tremendous crack of sound, and Claude took the opportunity of Lysithea leaning back into him to wrap both arms around her waist.
The world jolted as Pasha leapt, and Lysithea let out a squeal, half-excited, half-terrified, her hands coming to wrap around Claude's wrists as if to brace herself. The sudden moment of the apex, the dizzying certainty that they would fall once more, and then Pasha's wings swept down and shoved them higher, and higher once more.
As they climbed in a dizzying spiral, servants and workers all around the palace stopped to wave goodbye; the palace's white and blue tiled roof dwindled into something like a child's toy, and finally, at last, there was only them and Pasha and the great expanse of sky and sand.
"Thank goodness," Lysithea said once Pasha veered off from her spiral and angled west, her great shadow flashing over the rolling dunes. "If I had to listen to one more person tell me how unusual I looked, I was going to cause a diplomatic incident."
Claude squeezed her. "I'd help, but I think you could make the consequences much scarier and public than I could."
"Oh, yes," Lysithea said with dark satisfaction. "And besides, the crown prince of Almyra shouldn't be seen fighting someone else's battles for them."
Claude pressed his face into her white hair, still smelling faintly of the jasmine perfume she'd worn the day before, and murmured, "I think no one could blame the crown prince of Almyra for defending his wife and future queen." His thumb found the ring on Lysithea's finger and turned it, and for a long moment he was breathless:
With pride, with adoration, with sheer disbelief that he was now married-
Not to a princess his parents had chosen, someone to try to live beside even though they were virtual strangers, but to one of the greatest mages and minds of the age, terrible power wrapped up in such a petite form, his best friend, his Lysithea.
"Hmph," Lysithea said, but Claude didn't need to see her face to know she was pleased. "Did you bring the cake? We're going to get hungry before we reach the mountains."
"What do you take me for?" Claude lifted his head and released her so he could point at the small saddlebag hanging by her knee. "Cake's in there - well, what's left of it - and some cold honeycrisp tea. Oh, and some sun lotion."
"You planned everything." Lysithea turned to grace him with her small, private smile, the one only he knew. "I hope you packed gear for cold weather, too."
"I did, but it would've been so much easier if you'd just told me where we were going." Claude had planned the wedding, scoured Almyra for the best bakers and seamstresses and musicians - never let it be said he didn't know the power of appearances - while Lysithea, conspiring with his mother, planned the honeymoon. "'The mountains' doesn't give me much to go on!"
"Oh, Claude," Lysithea reached up to kiss him, then sat back, smile turning distinctly smug, "you're so bad with surprises."
Claude took her hand again and lifted it to kiss her knuckles, glancing up at her from beneath his lashes the way he knew devastated her. Right on target - her breathing hitched, a delicate pink flush that matched her eyes rising on her ears and cheeks. "What if there's no food for Pasha there? Or what if it's too cold?"
"Your parents and I made sure the larder was stocked for both us and Pasha," Lysithea said with admirable steadiness, even as Claude kissed his way over her palm and down to her wrist. "We even got the wyvern master to send an apprentice there to take care of her." She bit her lip as Claude tested his teeth against the thin skin of her wrist, breath shaking, and then managed, "As for the cold, there's a - a - natural hot spring, Claude, stop that!"
Claude released her with a laugh, then hissed as Pasha's up-and-down motion rocked Lysithea right back into his erection, caught in his tight leather trousers.
Lysithea inhaled, sharp and sudden, and then rolled her hips back as much as the flying harness would let her. Once, twice, divine pressure and heat, and Claude dropped his hands to her hips and stilled her with a groan.
"You're a terror," he managed, shifting as much as he could to relieve himself. "I have created a monster."
Lysithea grinned, impish. "You did, indeed. You should take responsibility for it."
"Oh, I do," Claude said, low, and bent his head to whisper in her ear, "I take absolute responsibility for teaching you everything you know."
She shivered, leaning back against him. "I've always been an excellent student."
"Full marks," he said, closing his teeth lightly over the shell of her ear. He'd fantasized for so many lonely nights at war about what Lysithea would be like between his sheets - shy, or curious, or leery of his appetites - but no fantasy could ever compare to the simple, real glory of her: spread out across his golden sheets like a vision, the lacey purple underthings she wore doing nothing to hide her hard nipples or the plump lips of her cunt, her shaking chin lifting as she dared him to teach her what she needed to know in the marriage bed.
"And," she said, voice breathy, "we'll be the only ones staying in our honeymoon spot, so you can teach me even more." She laid her hands on his thighs, squeezing as Claude kissed the fragrant hollow behind her ear. "I saw those strange things you thought you snuck into the saddlebags, you know!"
"I can't get anything past you, can I?" Lysithea was insatiably curious, so Claude really should have known better than to think she wouldn't spot the metal, glass, and ridged toys he'd packed, the gold-and-black leather cuffs lined with silk. "You'd think I'd have learned by now."
"Well," Lysithea said loftily, "we have years now for you to do so."
-
Pasha landed in the snow with a snort of joy, wet fluff flying up to hit Claude in the face. Lysithea, always more clever than him, simply hid herself in Claude's chest and avoided the worst of it.
"Your Majesties!" A young woman in wyvern-keeper's gear hurried out from the wyvern stable, shielding her eyes. "You're a little early!"
"Pasha wanted some cooler weather, I think," said Lysithea, who was watching the wyvern shove her snout into the snowdrifts and burble to herself. "Claude, help me down, will you?"
"Gladly." Claude unhooked himself from Pasha's harness and swung a leg over, slipping down to the ground. Snow crunched beneath his boots, and it took a moment to get his balance before he reached up to help Lysithea. "Careful, it's slippery."
Lysithea squawked as she hit the snow, and only Claude's grip around her shoulders kept her from slipping. She straightened up, grabbing the edges of her cloak and drawing them tight, and looked past Claude to the wyvern-keeper. "Is the house ready?"
"Of course," said the woman, approaching them and starting to unbuckle the saddlebags from Pasha's harness. "Got a fire going already, and the larder's stocked up. Let me get Pasha into the stable and fed, and I'll bring your bags; you two should probably get inside before it gets much colder."
Claude couldn't help but agree; even with the layers he and Lysithea had put on as Pasha flew into the mountains and the temperature dropped, the wind still drove into his skin. "We will, thank you. Where's the house?"
"Right behind those trees," said the woman, nodding behind them. "Can't miss it."
Lysithea kept hold of Claude's hand as she stepped past him, tugging him along with ill-disguised impatience. "I want some hot tea, and that fire sounds lovely." They entered the line of tall pine trees, branches laden and bent with snow, and Claude asked,
"How did you find this place, anyway?"
"Your father helped, actually," said Lysithea. The chill pinkened her face as they ventured deeper. "Apparently it's an old hunting lodge from the dynasty before yours, and it'd been left in disrepair for some time. He had workers up here fixing it and said to consider it a wedding..."
They paused, staring.
"-gift," Lysithea finished. Her eyes were wide and shining.
Claude whistled, low.
"Hunting lodge is selling it short, I think."
The cabin was like something from an illustrated fable: wooden logs neatly placed together; golden light spilling from the windows to sparkle on the snow; a tall stone chimney, puffing smoke; and to one side, where the cabin's side backed into the mountain itself, the mentioned hot spring, bubbling and sending steam rising into the snowflake-laden air.
All around, nothing but pine trees, snow, and silence: the crisp, waiting silence of winter.
"Ooh, let's go," Lysithea said, shivering with a start. "I want to see the inside!"
Hand-in-hand, they crunched over the snow to the cabin's porch, where someone - the wyvern-keeper? - had left a basket with two empty glasses and a bottle of sparkling Adrestian wine before the door.
"Later," Claude said, curiosity now burning within him too, and stepped over the basket to open the door.
Inside, the cabin radiated nothing but warmth and comfort. A fire crackled merrily in the stone fireplace, and in front of the fireplace lay a worn but well-loved Almyran rug. Outside the windows, the snow fell in endless drifts.
"-have to check the icebox," Lysithea said from behind him, where she'd closed the door and was busily stripping off her gloves and cloak. "Claude!"
"Lysithea," he said in reply, hefting her into his arms and bearing her to the rug while she squirmed. They tumbled down together in a fit of laughter, Claude rolling them until he had Lysithea pinned beneath him, golden firelight sparkling in her eyes and a smile on her face, her arms flung about his neck.
"I think I prefer 'husband,' actually," he said, and stooped to kiss her, once, twice, and then again.