Who a King Must Do Ch. 06

She took a quivering breath, her green eyes had found more tears after all. She blinked them away. "But as you stood in front of me like a warrior all I could see was Varian," the last word came out as if she was choking and a single drop finally rolled down her face. "And I couldn't do it. I just couldn't happily be together with a man just because I loved his father."

Anduin felt a heavy load in his chest and he gulped. Understandably, his erection was gone. He had thought her to give him an easier explanation, that she was just uncomfortable with being a slave or something else. Hearing about his father, however, made him fold his hands between his legs and look upwards as he suppressed his own tears. "Do you think he would be proud of me?"

"He would shake his head in disbelief," Valeera's laughing answer, still filled with grief, reached his ears. "'My son,' he would say, 'my little, tender boy always out for peace and tranquilities sexually enslaving all of the night elves? Sexually liberating the entire Alliance? Having three regular sluts slobber over his cock on MY throne every day? What have you been drinking?'" she sniffed, mumbling a little curse over the lack of sleeves on her outfit. "He would be shocked, but yes, he would be proud, Anduin."

"Thank you," he whispered and then lowered his head again to look at her with a smile. "Let me wipe away your tears," he offered, picking a handkerchief out of his pocket and getting up. A fateful bump on the road sent him flying towards her instead. He caught himself with his hands on either side of her head. 'Have I banged my head? My vision shouldn't be this cloudy,' he thought to himself.

"You are a fool," Valeera reached up to his face. Delicately, her leather-clad thumb brushed over his cheek. "Wipe away your own." Now he felt them streaming down his face. Then he felt her dark red lips on his. A long kiss of belonging somewhere, the kind they both needed.

"We shouldn't be doing this, most definitely not right now," Anduin eventually pulled back. There were lines he would only cross when he absolutely had to and taking advantage of a friend in a moment of utmost grief was one he was doubtful to step over even when he should have.

"We are not," Valeera assured him, feeling similar for different reasons. "I don't want our first time to be on the back of your father's memory either." She slowly pulled him into the seat next to her. "For now, remind me that there are still warm things in this world," she asked as she nestled against him. In a hesitating gesture, she reached for his hand. Anduin firmly met her three-quarters of the way and they interlocked their fingers.

"As you wish," he told her and conjured a simple ball of Light in his hand. It was the most basic spell a priest learned, a simple sphere that glowed not with heat but with a feeling that everything was going to be alright, that the world was full of lost sheep that all carried on somehow. It wasn't soothing in a false hope way, it was the simple fact that there was a tomorrow with the next sunrise.

"...What lessons did your father give you that stuck?" Valeera asked into the silence as their tears slowly faded.

Anduin laughed, there were just so many.