Chapter Twenty-Five
"Adam."
The voice and the very insistent shaking of his shoulder pulled Adam from a deep and quite comfortable sleep. He clawed his way to full wakefulness while attempting to gain his bearings. The bedchamber, which had been totally dark when he drifted off to sleep, was now lit by the soft flickering glow of the bedside lantern, which he squinted and looked away from, giving a groan as the light bore into his eyes. Face buried in the relative safe harbor of his pillow, he ground his words through his teeth, "Someone had better be dead, Stewart."
"You really were sleeping like a log. I don't know who Stewart is, but it's not me."
The all too familiar crisp British accent banished the last remaining traces of sleep. Adam bolted upright in bed, his eyes searching the barely lit darkness for his unexpected bedchamber guest. He didn't have to search far, considering that she was sitting on the unoccupied side of his bed with her legs crossed, a whimsical smile on her face.
"Ami? What are you doing here?"
"Saying hello to you," Ami fluffed and tucked an unused pillow between her legs, "what does it look like?"
"You can't be here."
"And now you make it sound like you really don't want to see me," Ami sniffed. "I teleport all this way, and having to slip out without waking Nynie, and all you can say is --"
"You teleported? Here?"
"Well, I certainly didn't saddle up my horse and ride. Besides, from what I understand, I could never have made it to the Palace in one night. And there would be such a scandal if the *Damiar Princess* just happened to be riding through the countryside to meet her fiancé." Ami propped her chin in the palm of her hand, her elbow resting on her knee, "Aren't you even going to say hello?"
"Hello. Now get out of here before Stewart hears us. He's sleeping in the next room, you know?"
This was absolutely unbelievable. He would have expected this sort of intrusion from Megabyte, or even from Jade, but not from Ami. Ami was normally more restrained than the aforementioned two Tomorrow People, but Adam supposed there was a first time for everything. And while he wasn't averse to seeing Ami, this was neither the time -- and it was far from the place. There was no way he could possibly explain her presence to Stewart, and he was relatively certain that there was no way she could explain her subsequent absence from the Keep.
"So I take it he's your bodyguard. Or," her mouth quirked upward wickedly, "Or is the High Prince more interested in boys than princesses?"
The absolute brazen innuendo in her words forced Adam to snap his jaw shut. He blinked at her as he tried to wrap his brain around the teasing words he would have expected from Hagen, not from the young woman sitting on his bed as though she owned that portion of it, far more wide awake than anyone should be at this hour.
"That's not even funny," Adam snapped more harshly than he intended. He gave up on the attempt to adjust his bedclothes for modesty's sake, after all, it was Ami who had barged into his bedchamber, and it was Ami who could feel uncomfortable. Although, discomfort appeared to be the one thing that she was not feeling. "And Stewart is not a boy."
"Touchy, touchy," Ami shook her head, "Are you always this grumpy when you first wake up? If so, you should tell me now so that I'm warned ahead of time. A wife does need to know whether or not she should avoid her husband in the morning."
The words were light but they were more effective at dispelling lingering drowsiness than any splash of cold water. Ami, too, caught their slap, her teasing demeanor sobering until the two of them were quiet, staring at each other from across the distance of beds and bloodlines and friendship.
"Ami," Adam spoke up, his voice somehow sounding even louder to his ears now than it had before. He gave a glance at the outer door, as though he expected Stewart to come barging in at any moment, which was entirely possible, and sent his next words into her mind, [You know you shouldn't be here.]
[I know,] she admitted, her fingers now plucking the edges of the pillow, [But I wanted to see you. I figure that if the *Damiar Princess Amideira* isn't allowed to even lay eyes on the *High Prince* before the bridal presentation that at least *I* could see *you.*]
[But why?]
[Why not?] Ami shrugged, [I just . . . I thought that we should talk.]
[We have talked.]
[Not like this!] To punctuate her meaning, she gestured between them, indicating their telepathic conversation. [And especially not like this when I'm over one hundred miles away. And this is more than a little weird, Adam. We should talk about it.]
Adam knew that she was right. As much as he hated to admit it, he knew that she was one hundred percent correct in her words and her approach. He just hated the fact that she had gotten it into her head to discuss this in the middle of the night, and had pulled him from a very sound sleep to do it. Not to mention the fact that she had teleported into his bedchamber, the one place he could never, ever explain her being.
Well, he couldn't exactly explain her presence in the Lion Palace at all, but there were other places far less scandalous.
[I had to wake you up first,] Ami pointed out. [You were sleeping like the dead.]
Adam blinked, berating himself too late for his lapse in shielding. He was definitely going to have to be more careful about that in the future. It wasn't the first time it had happened since coming here . . . and he was very much afraid that it wouldn't be the last.
[Believe it or not, Ami, some of us like to sleep at night.]
[I like it too. And I would be doing it, but . . . Adam, are we really going to do this?]
[Do we have any other choice?]
[We could make a break for it.]
The complete earnestness in her eyes made Adam smile. [And how far do you think we would get?]
[I hate it when you're so logical.] This time, her words were punctuated by a punch to the pillow. [I just can't believe that this is happening. First, I'm here and I'm a princess and then I find out that I'm getting married, which is horrible enough, but then I find out that I'm supposed to get married to you -]
[Thanks,] Adam interjected dryly.
Ami's eyes widened and she drew a sharp breath, shaking her head. Her hand reached out for his, [I didn't mean it the way that it sounded! I just meant that ... marriage. You know, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer ... it's serious ... and it's ... it's real. And I've never even had a serious boyfriend and now I'm supposed to get married all for the sake of some treaty? It's unfair!]
[Whoever told you life was fair, was lying, Ami]
[Oh, don't start in with that tired old cliche. I know, life isn't fair. It's not fair until we're dead and we're still likely to get screwed in the afterlife. I know that all right, but would you allow me the common courtesy to pout if I want to. God knows, I can't do with Nynie around and I'm longing for a really good snit.]
Her words brought a smile to Adam's lips. More than a smile, really. He actually chuckled softly, causing Ami to glare at him, her eyes flashing with injury and indignation.
"You're laughing at me!"
"No, I'm not," Adam shook his head and pressed his fingers to her lips, reminding her to be silent. [All right, maybe I am, but you have a unique way of putting things into a very skewed perspective.]
[My perspective is not skewed,] Ami objected. [And how come you're so calm about this?]
[Because it could be a lot worse.]
[And how's that?]
[Well, for starters, you could really be the Damiar Princess Amideira, or I could really be High Prince Adam Aldaric, and then one of us would not be here and the other really would be marrying a complete stranger for the sake of a treaty.] Adam paused and took her hands in his, giving her a smile, [But, that's not the case at all. We're friends. We're best friends, and I think that makes a difference. Besides, if Megabyte and Jade can do this, I don't think that we should have any real problems.]
[You just want to get rid of me so that you can go to sleep.]
[That too.] Reaching out, Adam pulled her into a friendly hug, [And don't forget the big picture. Once this wedding is out of the way, we can all put our heads together and try to find a way home.]
Ami clung to him a moment, her head resting on his shoulder. Adam didn't even want to think about how bad things would look if Stewart chose that moment to check on his prince, but even that thought didn't make him release his friend. Sometimes he forgot that she was younger than he was, forgot that despite her stubbornness and backbone, in some ways Ami was still just barely beyond her teens and not quite solidly into the realm of womanhood. In some ways, being Tomorrow People made them grow up, and in some ways, it simply held them apart from their peers.
He held her because he realized that they both needed this, this one quiet moment to truly deal with the hand fate had dealt them, and to deal with each other. And despite his earlier fears, Adam felt the truth behind his own words. There was no reason why he and Ami couldn't be mature enough to handle this; there was no reason why they couldn't deal with this with the same aplomb as Megabyte and Jade. They were still themselves, still Adam Newman and Ami Jackson, still friends, and nothing, not even this marriage or anything else that came with it, could change that.
*** End of Chapter Twenty-Five
