Warning: The following, while it's just playing around with a weird plot bunny, is a bit squicky, so don't read if the idea of an adult-teenager romance offends you (never mind that this was a common marriage situation in medieval times).
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June 3: touch of moonlight madness, feat. King Jonathan of Conté
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His movements calculatedly careful, Jonathan slipped into the palace gardens, replacing the heavy carved door behind him. The few lingering noises that trailed him out of the Great Hall were quickly swallowed by the dense foliage outside.
Once the door was secured, he allowed himself a sigh of relief. He felt the tension tangibly leave his shoulders as the cool night air wove through the threads of his brocade tunic like a particularly skillful set of fingers, massaging his aching muscles. He briefly closed his eyes before reopening them to fully take in the sight of the gardens, the dark shrubbery dappled with the moon's silvery illumination.
What were once pretty and innocuous stalks of flowers appeared now as walls that rose around him on all sides. Their growth, which he knew to be due to decades of care rather than the rapid result of some charm, only pressed more firmly on the ache in his heart at the knowledge and acceptance of years slipped by. A spark of remembered excitement flared in his stomach at the recollection of his onetime freedom to slip into these gardens simply as another unobserved youth – once a refuge, they now constituted his prison.
Suddenly, a glint of copper in the torchlight captured his attention. Like a man entranced, Jonathan followed it with first his eyes and then his footsteps. But his boots crunched loudly over the crisp leaves strewn along the ground, and only the thick hedges stared back.
She was waiting for him at the stone bench from which he had started; with the soundless grace of a feline, she had retraced his steps before he could. The silk of her amethyst dress shimmered in the moonlight, and he briefly wondered how much her mother had told her.
Her hair was soft against his calloused fingers and brighter than that in his memory. Images of shining purple light and flames reflecting off black stone jockeyed in his mind, and he momentarily shut his eyes. When he opened them again, he was met with a pair of sharp hazel-green eyes, a sight that brought him back to reality with the jarring recognition of not only his old love, but also his wife.
It was her mouth that settled him firmly at middle ground: tinged a light shade of red, the lower lip fuller than the upper, with smiles tucked into the corners. He ached to kiss her, to see if he could steal some smiles.
This time she didn't jerk away as he unlaced her bodice. Now he was the one fumbling, but her slender fingers assisted his thicker ones. Whatever promises had been made melted in the moonlight.
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I didn't intend to squick, but this prompt and this plot bunny just fused together. Also (added June 4), let me address a few people who were nice enough to review right as the chapter went up: Yes, it's Jon/Alianne; any mention of Alanna or Thayet is in his mind. Yes, I know it's squicky, but if you can't experiment (with proper warning attached, of course, which I've done) with such things in fanfiction, where can you? Anyway, as Alianne said, "It's as if all the interesting men were born in my father's generation."
