I stood still as Kenna and Aylee started undressing me. With every piece of clothing removed my agitation grew.
This is a day I had been expecting since I was a girl. And this night I had imagined since I was old enough to understand it's significance. First with curiosity, then with confusion and at last, with fear.
As the years went by it was getting harder and harder to remember my sweet childhood friend and even harder to imagine the young man he had become. Had the years made him cruel? Had he forgotten me and would receive me with perfect indifference?
After arriving at Court, these troubling thoughts seized, only to be replaced by others. My first encounter with Francis filled me with both joy and disappointment. He had grown to be beautiful and his manners were perfect. And yet he was distant and guarded, and no attempt of mine would entice him to break his cold politeness. He didn't want to marry me. Worse, he didn't care who he married as long as it was the best course of action for France.
I hated him then, hated the fact that while he looked at me as a valuable asset, I looked at him with feelings that had grown out of simple childhood fondness and taken a life of their own, overwhelming me and making me hate him for being my weakness.
However as the weeks passed, being at court started teaching me more and more of what it meant to be a sovereign. The danger on me and my country was more imminent then when I was at the convent, even though it had reached me even there. The peaceful country life was replaced brutally by the plotting, sinister Court life that had me walking on thin ice constantly.
I had enemies, more so than I thought initially. These enemies lurked, waited for the perfect chance to eliminate me one way or another. I had to adapt fast and stand tall against them, firm for my people and for myself. I began to understand Francis better. Being brought up at this climate had robbed him of his innocence too early and I couldn't expect for him to have fed hopes of a loving union as I had. Love had always been a privilege he didn't have a right to, for him.
But as time passed, the trials that were in store for us starting bringing us closer together. We formed a bond, a friendship as strong as the one we had when I chased him up the stairs and teased him for his name. I thought that was the most I could hope for, a future where I would love him in secret and he would respect me enough to be a good husband as his duty enforced him.
I had no idea of his true feelings until our hopes for a wedding vanished and we were separated by the harsh choices that laid before us. When I was no longer his fiancée, no longer his for the first time since we were six, I had the chance to see how deep his feelings ran. Beyond the tender love I hoped to earn with time, I was faced with something powerful, ferocious that was displayed In his jealousy toward my other indented . Nothing tied me to him, I was of no use to him or his country and yet he chased me, pursued me and ironically we fell In love when we were no longer allowed to feel that way.
In my despair I threw caution to the wind, greedy for what I thought were my last days with him. And since his first kiss, I realized I was losing more than I thought I would. That first kiss woke something In me I didn't know I was capable of feeling. A hunger a thousand times stronger than the yearning I usually felt when I looked at him. He was even more intense of course, his experience making him bold and his touches unapologetic. I didn't even have the strength to resist. If I was sentenced to purgatory for the rest of my days, I deserved a taste of heaven.
Our kisses became more and more and I came very close to compromising my virtue more than once. In the brief conversations I'd had with the nuns they always addressed a wife's duty as a burden we had to endure, so we could produce heirs. And I could see that being the case with Tomas. But with Francis I was as insatiable as he, craving more and more each time, demanding he gave me all of him as I would expect no less. Often it was him who stopped me with an amused laugh that didn't hide his sadness that we were to part. I had finally understood why he kept me at arms length. To protect himself from this pain, as it was acute even as we were tightly embraced. My future those days seemed bleak and devoid of meaning.
Thankfully we found a way out and now I am where I belong, married to the boy I dreamt of for as long as I can remember, and who I have loved in more ways than one and who I will love for the rest of my days.