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"Annette?"
She stirs in Felix's arms, pulling her nose out of his shoulder and resting her chin on his chest. He blinks down at her. She blinks back. "Hm?"
He hesistates, biting the inside of his lip to try and hold his question back. It tumbles out anyway. "Do you ever dream it's our wedding day?"
Of course she does, and she dreads those dreams. First, her dress doesn't fit, and she laments every baked goodie Mercie fed her over the last year. Then, no one shows up to the ceremony, because she wrote the wrong date on the invitations. In the most recent, Felix had wanted to tie the knot onstage in Enbarr, but he stood her up and left her all alone in the big city. Each nightmare is more ridiculous than the one prior, but Annette never seems to notice until after she wakes up.
She opens her mouth to answer him, but she stops when she sees the faraway look in his eyes. He buries his nose in her hair and mumbles, "...and you're so happy because it's finally here, but then you wake up." He squeezes her tighter. "And it's not."
Annette closes her eyes and lets herself get lost in the rhythm of Felix's hands rubbing up and down her back. Good thing she kept her big mouth shut. That would have been so insensitive! Of course Felix wouldn't have wedding nightmares! He's not planning the ceremony!
He sighs and squeezes her again. "I wish it were tomorrow. I wish it were today."
"It'll be here before you know it," she finally speaks up. Shifting in his arms again, she pokes her head out so she can look into his eyes. She's distracted by his adorable pout. "It's coming up so fast," she continues. "We still have to pick flowers to decorate, of course, but we have the most delicious velvet cake recipe, and don't get me started on the steaks we'll have—they're to die for, Felix—and Mercie made sure that everyone gets their own—"
Felix's words are blunt, yet they cut through her sentence like a sharpened sword. "I don't care about any of that." Her brain slows down to a screeching halt, and before she can process his interjection, Felix crushes her against him, tangles his legs with hers, and mumbles into her neck, "I'm sick of waiting to marry you, Annette."
His statement bounces around in her empty head like a rubber ball. It makes her heart swell. It also makes her heart ache. Felix is cold with most everyone he meets. When she was younger, she was sure that he was a villain through and through, that there wasn't a shred of compassion or love in him. But now? His fingers digging into her back through her blouse, his hot, shaky breaths against her neck, and his raw declaration prove her wrong.
He's proven her wrong each day for the past eight hundred forty-two, and she knows he will continue to do so for the next fifty-three.
"Almost there," she whispers, gently running her fingers down his sides. "We'll be wed by the Garland Moon. Only a little bit longer."
He doesn't say anything after that, but his light kisses against her neck tell her everything. I'll wait, they say, but I won't be happy about it.
She giggles. How could she not? The man she used to see with horns on his head is holding her tightly, tenderly. A villain would never love her as openly and sincerely as Felix does. She pats his cheek and coaxes his face up, giving her an opening to plant a kiss right on his lips.
Maybe he has a point. Fifty-three days is still rather far away.