Taran usually awoke at first light, his body primed from years of turning from bed straight to the farm chores of the morning.

But he slept more soundly this night than he had in years. The sunlight was full through the window as it eased his eyes open slowly—and he blinked hard several times at the room that met his view.

The sheets and blankets and blossoms and—were those hanging lanterns?—had faded quickly into the background of his wedding night, and he had only begun examining them in the light of day when he remembered why they were there. Beside him, as if a dream come to life, lay the princess Eilonwy herself—not blurred by contours of his imagination, but vivid and breathing and bare-skinned, her shining hair tumbling over her shoulders as she lay curled next to him, eyes closed and lips in a faint smile.

He gazed at her for long moments and lost himself in the reality before him in the new light of day. After a time, she stirred faintly, and her eyelids fluttered open. As her clear blue eyes adjusted into his, he could see reality dawning in her own mind as well, and she chuckled lowly and pulled him down to her.

Without thinking, he found his hands and lips continuing their exploration from the previous night, as if the more he could take in of her body, the more he would believe that this was real.

Finally she sighed and ran her fingers through his hair. "Taran of Caer Dallben, I believe you have never slept so late in your life—for shame." She yawned. "Although I am hardly any better. My silly pig-keeper, you should have woken me!"

"I am waking you," he mumbled from somewhere near her navel, and she kicked his hip teasingly and was surprised by the strength in his grasp as he caught her ankle and ran his hand slowly up her leg. "Honestly," she gasped. "They're probably already at breakfast, they'll wonder where we are—"

"Mmm I think they'll guess," he muttered, and she suppressed a yelp of surprised laughter as she marveled at how her proper and dutiful Taran had shifted suddenly in his valuation of other people's judgment after one night with his new bride.

But as he moved his attention back to her neck, and she watched the ripple of his bicep as he clutched her closer against him, she forgot too that there was anyone else in the world but him.

Much later, when they finally emerged from the cottage, Eilonwy was almost embarrassed at the angle of the sun in the sky. And she saw the sheepish note in Taran's face as he glanced back at her on the threshold of the door. But then he held out his hand to her, and she wondered again at his new frankness with his affections, as they crossed the field, hands entwined, towards the encampment. Walking next to him, her husband—and he was now fully her husband, every inch of long legs, broad shoulders, tawny muscle, depthless green eyes, and that still-crooked smile—she shuddered with doubt about her ability to focus on anything else in the hours and days and months and oh, possibly, years to come.

She had yearned for him constantly of course, before, but never with the sparking knowledge of what could be possible between them within moments of a raised eyebrow. But they were silent as they walked, and his eyes grew clouded as he looked ahead to Smoit's encampment. He had started grasping her hand tighter as they approached.

She stopped him, put a hand on his chest, and his eyes drifted only slowly from the camp and into hers. "Trust yourself as I trust you," she said. "And know that everything that has come before this has made you equal to this moment." He clutched her hand on his chest and a small smile on his face began to reach his eyes.

"And of course, I am always with you," she grinned with a toss of her head. "So now you will be more than equal to anything before you." He bent his forehead to hers and kissed her gratefully; but then he straightened up to move towards to the camp, and he became the High King.

The week spent preparing to depart Caer Dallben somehow reminded Taran of the stormiest days of the sea crossing to Mona. The days were a blur of planning and questioning, persuading and listening, meeting and greeting—though his favorite parts were when he and Eilonwy could spend time with the farmers and workers who had gathered at Caer Dallben, and who soon relaxed enough in the young couple's presence to tell them of their lives and families at home. These moments pulled Taran once again into the world that he would hold in front of him forever afterward as his benchmark of progress as king.

Eilonwy noticed with amusement that the women in Taran's presence took even longer to speak with him comfortably—and the younger ones, practically never. Taran seemed only slightly bemused if he noticed at all; once, he remarked to Eilonwy with derision how little the nobility of Prydain must have deigned to speak with commonfolk, since the people seemed so stunned to be around even a pigkeeper-turned-king. She did not tell him that even in his worn cloak and muddy boots, there was a piercing quality to his green gaze and a powerful set to his jaw that was increasingly conveying an irresistible aura of leadership.

But if the days stretched his senses—every minute demanding his full attention, his sharpest reaction, his greatest empathy—the nights overcame him in a different way. He still struggled to believe it was real when Eilonwy would shake down her hair from its pinnings in the evening, or casually slip off the sleeves of her dress so her shoulders shone smooth and bare in the lamplight. There was a small piece of him—though it receded each night—that still almost felt as if he were watching a forbidden scene in his own imagination rather than actually experiencing his bride drop her clothing and invite him with heated lips to come and enjoy her.

It wasn't what he would have chosen, to jump into kingship and marriage in the same week—nay, the same day. But the nights with Eilonwy were the only thing that quenched his mind, that erased him down to pure instinct and physicality, so that in the mornings he found himself built back up to face the day.

Of course, there was still the serious drawback of one time period slipping suddenly into the other. He would be watching two of Smoit's bannermen bicker over the location of the ravine on the map, when a flash of Eilonwy arched over the kitchen table would invade his mind, and he would clutch the arm of the chair and fight to beat back the vision, as if everyone else could also see it.

Day and night were fever dreams of entirely different temperatures, and after a few days, he did almost start to feel seasick.

On the last night, Eilonwy pulled him from the door just as they were about to enter the cottage. It was late in the evening after a rousing dinner that still, in her opinion, had lasted entirely too long for two newlyweds who had only begun to taste each other after years apart. Taran had at one point been engrossed in conversation with an older man whose balding head and genial demeanor reminded him of Coll; he had been a baker before going to fight the war. His son sat a few seats down the table, talking between blushes with a young woman from the farms around Caer Dallben. The baker was nursing a wound to the shoulder, and told Taran that after being slashed with the sword, the first thought that struck his mind was that he might not live to see his grandchildren.

The baker looked over then at his laughing son, while across the table Eilonwy looked up from a pause in her own conversation—and Taran's breath caught at the trembling fragility of the people who walked around carrying the full measure of other people's love. Once again, the twinge of sorrow for Eilonwy's choice pricked at him, until she caught his eyes a few moments later and he melted into the reassurance of her smile.

That night, she veered him away from the cottage door without explanation, and he was grateful to relinquish decision-making as she led him beyond a grove of trees, beyond the view of the encampment and all within it, to a single tree beyond. In the waxy moonlight, the petals of the apple blossoms glowed almost of their own, and she took his hands and looked up at the boughs.

"Shall I climb it again?" she asked.

He looked up and then back into her laughing eyes, and then understood. "You know you don't need the excuse of falling out of trees anymore," he replied lowly, tucking a curling strand of hair behind her ear. "I'll hold you anytime you want."

She slapped him away and grinned. "But of course I was right," she said. "The trees change every year, and I had to learn it anew. And…I don't know if I'll be back here next year to do the same." She slid a hand up the trunk, and he saw that her eyes held moonlit tears. "I think I learned everything useful here—at Caer Dallben. What it is to have a home. To work hard, to work well. To care about people, who care about you." She laughed ruefully. "Naturally, Teleria would turn as red as a beet if she could hear me, but even if I did learn a few things at Dinas Rhydnant…I think here is where I learned almost everything that matters."

She looked up again towards the top of the tree, almost as if looking back at him would break her. Her mind flooded suddenly with everything she had lost that week—the faces of Flewddur and Gurgi and Dallben and Gwydion. And then the face of Coll, twisted in a painful smile as they tried to wrest him from the grasp of death…and the face of Coll again, lit by the sunlight of every season at Caer Dallben as he helped her, comforted her, even chastised her with the patience she had always imagined in a father of her own.

She realized slowly that Taran had come up behind her and slipped his arms around her, nesting his chin on her shoulder. She leaned into him, and he pressed his cheek against hers as the tears slipped down them. "I feel it too," was all he said, and it was enough.

She turned to face him, and was struck again by this broad-shouldered figure with Taran's boyhood face molded into the rugged features of a man. Here was the part of Caer Dallben she held most dear—and finally, he was hers. And somehow, that was also enough.

She kissed him softly in thanks, and as he clasped her to him gently, she found her lips wanting more. She stroked her hands across his face, his hair, and whimpered against his mouth as he returned her kisses as if slowly unleashing a tide. Unbidden, her hands began unlacing the ties of his shirt. He held back still, respectful of her sorrow, but she was pushing his shirt off his body and drinking in his mouth, and the scent of her hair was starting to make him dizzy.

In the back of his mind, he had always known this was their last full day at Caer Dallben, but somehow the feeling hit him keenly in her arms, under this tree, where he had looked up into her eyes on that long-ago day and first realized the extent of the danger he was in.

The urge to hold fast to his old life—and the love that would carry him into the next—overcame him finally, and he pressed her roughly against the trunk of the tree, as his lips pressed roughly against hers. Neither of them understood how or when it happened, but when somehow they were both embracing in their undergarments, Taran lowered her gently to the grass beneath the tree and raised up on an elbow to lose himself in the cool waters of her eyes.

In a flash, he was back to that day, looking at her in this same way and in this same spot, and he stroked her hair with all the tenderness he could not bring himself to show then. "Oh how the tables have turned," he whispered. "And how do you enjoy being the one pinned to the ground beneath this tree, Your Majesty?"

"I enjoy it quite well," she replied, in her normal voice. "Only, Assistant Pig-Keepers are still so very slow about what to do next." Her grin spread slowly across her face.

He chuckled as he buried his face in the hollow of her throat and continued down to the rise of her breasts. "Forgive me," came the muffled reply. "I am not used to being in the presence of royalty." He slid the thin straps of her chemise over her shoulders and eased it down the slope of her stomach. "Please, give me my orders," he finished hoarsely.

The grass prickled beneath them as the young king complied with his orders, and Eilonwy glimpsed patches of pearly blossoms and starlight as Taran joined them together more tightly and deeply somehow than even in the nights before. The sky spun away as waves of desire spilled over her, and the edges of pain that had accompanied the breathless pleasure of her previous nights faded into pure bursts of aching joy.

She was only vaguely aware of his ragged gasps above her, reminded of the fire of his lips when they moved hungrily over her shoulders, her neck, her mouth. She clutched at him desperately as he seemed to pour into her at once all the longing that he couldn't express over so many years.

Perhaps the whole night had passed, for all she knew, when he gripped her with a feverish shudder and cried out with almost painful surrender against her hair. She tightened against him and he collapsed into her, unmade, breathing in again the wonder of his bride and the new world they entered every night.

In time, he became aware of the crickets singing around them, and found that she was dozing softly in his arms. He kissed her slowly awake and then slid her chemise back up her body (much less fun than the reverse), and helped her into her dress.

"Well," she said breathlessly as she tied together the laces of his breeches, "That was a little different than last time."