"Do you blame this person?"
"At my father! Yes ! "
"No, silly, at your mother?"
"Of course! She deserves so much better!"
He ran his fingers over her face, over her lips, parted them and inserted his tongue.
It was a kiss of profound sweetness that made her melt completely.
"You know, this is the kind of annoyance impossible to conceal from existence."
"I know." she sighed another painful sigh.
"I hurt my mother by accusing her of being an idiot refusing to see her get back together with my good-for-nothing father. I said that to my mother when I love her so much. And then I came to your hill and...I almost died."
She snuggled into the coldness of her wonderful lover.
"Without you, I would have died. And yet..."
"What?"
"Nothing."
And yet, she wanted to tell him, if she hadn't almost died that day, then she'd never have met him. And Diria understood that this eventuality would have been the greatest tragedy of her life. Life was an ocean of unpredictability.
"These rather chaotic events have put things back into perspective for you."
"I realized that however maddening, unpleasant and despairing it might be, my mother so wonderful and strong coming back to a man who would never deserve her, even if it's my father I'll never stop loving, I have no right to forbid it. Because it's her life."
Was Diria imagining it, or had her sovereign made a significant gesture on hearing those last sentences? She looked up to see his face, but when she saw that it was only lazily casual, she reassured herself.
It really was her imagination.
She smiled, kissed his lips and curled up against him again.
"I'm sorry," was her only comment in the face of her problem, which would never have a solution, at least not one that would satisfy her.
"And you, Majesty."
"My own problems?"
"You have so many. Like that curse a woman who looks like me put on you."
He embraced her fiercely.
"She was beautiful." he revealed to her with a strange note in his voice. Very strange. "But not as beautiful as you. She adored me and then, her adoration or affection or whatever you want to call the feeling she brought to me, turned into something dark, enough to lead her to curse me."
"That had happened a long time ago?"
"Yes."
"And you let it happen to you...?"
"Let's just say I underestimated her desire for…everything."
"You're an animal."
"But I am!"
Gariod had rolled onto his back and Diria climbed on top of him, then ran her hand over his cadaverous body, soon descending slowly, inexorably downwards.
"If you continue your descent, I'll never let you back up again."
He kept his promise.
His relentlessness on her, on her body so vulnerable was poignant, but the pleasure was different, in a way, even more dazzling. Diria felt as if a myriad of shining stars rained down on her, invading her being and exploding inside her.
Hearing his voice break into a thousand fragments of ecstasy and pain was an unheard-of moment for her, his beastly sweat pouring over her to add to hers, and him still thrusting to pour everything he had into her no doubt to the last drop.
Another moment of incredible, unforgettable emotions.
And then that strange sensation came over her again. The feeling that something was wrong, but she'd never know how to ask.
After another moment of searing, devastating hand-to-hand, the two lovers rested and chatted like old acquaintances.
Or more precisely, Gariod asked her questions about herself, and she readily answered. Questions about her family, her friends, her childhood, her tastes, her dreams, everything...but he revealed almost nothing, claiming it was impossible for him. She could only extract from him that he was an only child, that he had lost his father as a child and that his mother lived far, far away.
She understood from his expression that she had to leave.
Their moment together lasted no more than two hours, but for the young woman it counted as two days. As her wonderful lover burned his clothes, he lent her his own, his huge t-shirt and pants. The gate opened, surrounded by intertwined woods sprinkled with gold leaf.
On the way in, Diria had to explain about the clothes. Her family laughed so hard that she almost told them in detail about her afternoon, to put them on the spot, but after disdainfully turning away from their barrage of questions, she returned to her room and decided to keep her clothes on.
"He's a sovereign, he must have so many he doesn't know what to do with."
She was practically flying the next day to join her lover, her body so radiant with happiness and impatience it blinded. But what was her dismay, humiliation and anger when she arrived in the hill, in the forest, and nothing happened.