-The Wedding Night-

xxx

She was the most beautiful creature he'd ever seen.

The moon bleached her chestnut skin until it glowed silver; made her black hair gleam like frost. Her long eyelashes billowed out in two tiny fans over her ocher eyes, closed in peace.

He ran his hand over her shoulder and it rested on her arm, blinking in adoration. Never had he felt joy this pure; this boundless.

Never had he been so in love.

"Piper," he whispered.

Just to feel it roll of his tongue.

From now on, he'd be able to say her name that way. Passionately. He would never go back to the nervous glances and second-guesses. For once, he felt truly happy. He felt complete.

Pulling in a deep breath, he closed his eyes. Her sweet scent, that of spices and oranges and fresh air, filled his lungs. His palm wandered over her smooth skin to her hand. His ivory fingers closed over her chestnut ones. He listened to the wind and her breathing and felt her heartbeat through the thin skin on the back of her hand.

But nothing good lasted forever.

That was something Aerrow had learned through his short life. Everything he cherished would be taken away from him as soon as he was sure it was his.

Not Piper. Of course not.

But this moment, this unbelievably blissful moment, would.

He remembered. And as he did, his stomach began to tighten and his head began to throb.

Why couldn't he just fall asleep? He gritted his teeth in frustration. Why couldn't all this be enough to exhaust him beyond thinking?

He hated it, the remembering.

And as he lay there, eyes unseeing as they rested on his beloved, guilt began. It began in his heart and pumped through every inch of him in only seconds. Instead of an overjoyed, just-married, young lover, the horrid emotion made him feel like he really was. His skin was covered in a thin sheen of sweat and his long bangs were stuck to his forehead and his joints were all achy.

Then he realized, with a profound sadness, a sadness so pure and overwhelming that tears swam over his closed eyes and wandered down his face, that he would never be able to be completely truthful to his wife. This secret would follow him, breathing down his neck. It would slip between their every embrace and cloud his mind with doubt. It would always make him less than what she deserved.

That cursed sin from so long ago.

Aerrow squeezed Piper's hand as a cloud drifted before the moon and they were thrown into darkness.