Some love stories burn like wildfire. Others take root and wait for spring. Ours was both—and when the final petal fell, it didn't mark an end. Only the echo of forever.
The years passed—slowly, quietly, like a song hummed under breath.
Our village grew. Roads softened beneath children's feet. The council expanded. Almond trees multiplied across the hills.
And Damien and I?
We aged—but not gently.
He never ruled again. But when strangers sought wisdom, they found him.
Not in a palace.
But beneath a tree, hammer in hand, sleeves rolled to the elbows, teaching a boy how to steady a beam.
He never walked ahead of me anymore.
He walked beside me.
Or one step behind.
—
The cough came in the fourth autumn.
A dry thing, at first. Then wet. Then angry.
I ground every herb I knew. Boiled roots. Whispered stories into his fever.
"I used to be a monster," he rasped one night.
"No," I said, tucking the blanket tighter. "You were a boy. You were afraid. But you grew."
He smiled, cracked-lipped and honest.
"Because you made staying alive harder than power ever was."
—
The petals began falling early that year.
I watched him watching them.
He asked, one evening, for his old shirt—the one with missing buttons and a torn cuff.
"I want to die in something you used to sleep in."
He pressed a ring into my hand.
Silver. Faded. Still warm.
"Keep it. For when it's your turn."
I didn't cry.
I just lay beside him, head to chest, counting what breaths I could.
—
He died in spring.
Under the almond tree he planted.
Not as an emperor.
Not as a legend.
Just as Damien—man, husband, forgiven.
The last blossom fell as his chest stilled.
I kissed his lips, cold with dawn.
"You kept your promise," I whispered. "Even in death."
—
We buried him beneath the tree.
No crown.
No sword.
Only a branch laid across his heart—and a boy, now grown, who carved his name into bark instead of stone.
The villagers wept. Children laid petals by the roots. Someone played a flute—off-key, imperfect, real.
Ten new trees were planted that day.
A forest of remembrance.
—
I still live in the cottage.
I tend the garden. Teach painting to little hands. Kiss the ring each morning like a prayer I haven't forgotten how to say.
When the wind moves right, I hear his laugh in the leaves.
When the sunlight catches the stream, I see him standing barefoot on its edge, shirt half-buttoned, eyes still unsure he deserved love—and yet full of it.
And when spring returns, as it always does, I sit beneath our tree.
I speak to him.
And I remember this:
That our love was never about kings or crowns or palaces.
It was about choosing each other.
Over power.
Over fear.
Over and over again.
Until the very last blossom.
And beyond it.