Chapter 5

-Katherine-

“Goddess, I want you all the time,” he said, making me feel warm over, and he was still inside of me, growing hard again.

“We need to talk!” I told him, and he looked at me confused. “So let’s dress.”

“Dress? Now?” he asked with a smug smile, like he couldn’t see why there was any need to dress when we were naked and clearly burning for more, but this made no sense, and I believed Darius was the source of my answers.

“Yes, dress. Now.”

“As my Queen commands.”

He moved away from me, and I gasped as I felt him slip from my body. I watched him as he left the bed, completely naked, and for the first time I saw him. I saw him as someone to be desired, and I certainly did. His body was so strong, and Goddess! How tight was his ass? No, I scolded myself. Never had I had such thoughts, and I was still a bit confused since my mind remembered Acan as my husband, and I should only desire him, but now he… wasn’t. It made me notice something else.

“Why do you keep calling me ‘my Queen’?” I asked, as Darius found a way of pants and put them on.

He turned to me, smiling a little. It was so strange to see. I had seen him smile more this morning than I had ever in my life knowing him. Or… my old life. My former life? What did I call it?

“It’s just for fun,” he said. “Sounds a little better than my Princess, but that is what you are, of course. You’re as beautiful as any queen, though.”

“Wait… you’re not king?”

“King?” he asked, confused. “No.”

I narrowed my eyes a little, beginning to feel frustrated, and the last thing I remembered before I… before I… died, was Darius.

“Darius!”

He looked shocked at me as I spoke his name in an angry voice, but I wasn’t sure who else to talk to but him. Darius had to have the answers. He had to! If not him, who else? I held the sheets tightly around me as I walked over to him, and he looked completely perplexed, not sure where my anger originated from.

“What is going on?!” I shouted.

“Going on?”

“Yes!”

“With what?”

“You. Me! Acan!”

“Acan? Why are we talking about Acan?” he asked.

“It’s not funny! I am going out of my mind!” I yelled. “We are not married!”

“We are. Why do you act like you don’t remember?” he asked.

“Because I don’t! I don’t remember any…” just then something flashed in my mind and a memory I did not recognize sprung forward, making me see myself arriving in front of the castle, like I had with Acan, but it wasn’t Acan, who stepped forward to be presented to me. It was Darius. “It… makes no sense.”

“What doesn’t?”

“You! Us!”

“Us?” he asked.

“Us!”

“You must guide me, wife, because I do not know what has gotten into you this morning. Except me, of course,” he joked, and I looked at him, shocked, making him shocked as well. “What?”

“You don’t joke… Not like that,” I whispered.

“With you I do.”

“No, not even me. Do you not remember?”

“Remember?”

“Our lives,” I whispered. “My… Our death?”

“Our death?” he asked, but then as he spoke the words, something seemed to happen inside of him, and Darius looked around, as if he now didn’t recognize the place, and then his eyes landed on me. “Katherine?”

I nodded, hoping he was starting to see something.

“Shit…”

-Darius-

I knew what I had done. I had no choice as I held Katherine in my arms, I used hidden powers. I turned back time, but not just that, I gave it a new outcome. I changed our future. I gave myself what I desired, but I also chose to protect Katherine. She wasn’t the only one who saw the truth that night. I saw it too. How had I never felt the darkness in my brother’s heart? Had I been ignorant? Blind? Because the one thing that ensured my own safety at court was my brother. His acceptance of me. It had been my father who protected me when I was younger, but he died shortly after Acan’s and Katherine’s marriage. If my brother had wanted it, he could have had me destroyed. There was only one person the people at court hated more than Katherine, and that was me. So I had altered some things, ensuring she would be safe from ending in the fire again, but my powers had affected me more than I thought. I did not know what I had created. I did not remember at first, before Katherine reminded me, and then I saw it all so clearly. I remembered what I had done. Though I was not sad about the outcome at all. Katherine stood before me, wrapped in a sheet and completely naked underneath. I had enjoyed her body this morning and last night, and memories that shouldn’t ever have existed appeared in my mind, reminding me throughout our marriage how many years I had enjoyed her body, and it brought a smile to my lips, because in my memories I saw how much she had enjoyed herself as well.

“You remember?” she asked, and I snapped out of the happy memories, seeing how scared she looked.

“I remember,” I told her.

“So… can you explain it to me?”

“I think you know what happened that night.”

“I know!” she yelled, before looking at the ground. “I know… but the last part. You… saved me. Have you always… saved me?”

“You know I have.”

“Yes, but I believed it was accidents,” she said, and met my eyes, looking utterly broken. “It wasn’t… accidents, was it?”

“No.”

“Did you know?”

“I did,” I said. “Or I had a hunch.”

“A hunch… And you never told me?”

“Acan didn’t want me to,” I explained.

“I see why…”

“We both do,” I whispered, looking away, while holding a shirt in my hand. “Goddess…”

“I know…”

We were both overcome with the realization of that night and what was happening now. Katherine and I had married. Married! I had gotten the woman, but that didn’t change what had happened to us.

“Darius, did you die too?” she asked.

“What?”

“I mean, I don’t understand how this happened. Did the Goddess grant us a new chance? Has she “fixed” the problem of my past?” she asked.

“No, I did that,” I told her and focused on her.

“How?”

“You know I have the powers of… taking others’, right?”

“Yes.”

“I took these.”

“These?”

“Time altering powers.”

“You absorbed someone?” she accused.

“No… or yes, but it was on a battlefield,” I explained to her. “He was very powerful, and he almost made us lose because he kept changing the outcome and time until he got what he wanted.”

“Oh…”

“I am not a monster,” I whispered, and looked at her with fear spreading through me. Katherine shook her head, looking regretful and coming closer, placing her hands on my neck, running them down my chest, and holding them over my heart, making sparks appear.

“Of course not,” she said. “I am sorry I…”

But then she trailed off, feeling the powerful attraction between us. I had always felt very attracted to her, but it seemed to have reached new heights. Maybe because we had spent three years together in love. I did not care that she had no powers. This was the woman I loved, and I couldn’t help but wrap an arm around her and kiss her hard.