A Night With The King

“You can be a happy man, but right now, you look too happy and I am afraid to ask what the reason is,”

“Patrick, don’t worry,”

“Oh, but I am worried, I am worried that I already know why and your happiness might make me lose more brain cells than I have already lost.”

Patrick was such a killjoy, the man needed to fall in love so that he too would know what it feels like.

“I don’t know why my happiness means you lose brain cells,”

“Cut to the chase and tell me what happened,”

Patrick persuaded. Even though he knew telling him would mean hearing another earful as to why he and Sophie couldn’t be together, Lance still told him.

“Well, if you must know, I told her that I love her, well, she said it first and I said it too,”

he announced. Patrick didn’t even look surprised.

“I saw this coming, aha, it has been over since that day, I should have done better,”

Patrick said. he was talking more to himself.

“What day?”

Lance asked.

“The day you slept in the dungeon with her, you swore that you just went to sleep but I knew it, hell, I feel like a prophet right now and I don’t feel proud of it, I predict this would happen,”

Patrick replied.

“I am going to give it to you, you caught on before I did, you are good,”

Lance said pointing at him and giving a thumbs up, Patrick just side-eyed him.

“Don’t look so proud,”

He cautioned but Lance didn’t listen.

“What do you think?”

“You are asking me what I think? You are asking me if I approve. If that’s the question, I have two answers, as your best friend, I want you to be happy and I know she brings so much happiness to you but as your special advisor, I think you are making a very big mistake,”

“Why would you think I am making a big mistake?”

He asked even though he already knew the answer to that.

“You know already,”

“Yeah, I do, but that’s not going to stop me, I love her and she loves me and my goal is to keep us together for a long time,”

He promised.

“So? You are thinking of marrying her? While she is carrying another man’s child?”

Lance didn’t like how the question sounded. He didn’t care if Sophie was pregnant or not, she never hid her pregnancy from him, he knew she was pregnant when he asked her out, knew she was pregnant but that didn’t stop him from falling in love with her. Her child can become his child too, he already loved the unborn child just as much as he loved the mom.

“Yes, I am going to marry her,”

He said firmly.

“And you think the elders will let you do that? You might be the king but they have power too, you don’t just come around and do things however you want, you have been avoiding them for over two months now, they won’t stand by and watch you do what you want, Lancelot, I wish there was a way to keep your happiness but we don’t make the rules,”

Patrick asserted. Lance refused to believe that there was nothing he could do, he was the ruler, not the elders, they were nothing but a bunch of old men who thought they could govern him or tell him what to do, well, not in this case, not in matters that concern his happiness. He can only be a good and active king if he is mentally okay and he couldn’t see himself doing that if Sophie isn’t with him.

“Your concerns are there but let me tell you that I am going to change whatever rules and make new ones, this isn’t the Stone Age, who I marry isn’t going to affect my place as the king but I can’t just marry anyone just because they fit in what a bunch of old men think should be a good wife,”

Lance let out. He had respect for the elders but sometimes, their way of thinking was outdated.

“They didn’t make the rule, it has always been like that, they met it like that, you can only marry from outside the kingdom if you are marrying into royalty and merging the two kingdoms, if not, you are to pick a bride from among the maidens from noble families within Otano,”

Patrick said as if Lance wasn’t aware of those details.Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive © material.

“The thing is, that rule is an unwritten law, it is not written anywhere, and therefore, it doesn’t hold any ground, I don’t care whatever generation started that shit, it is going to end with me because I am going to marry Sophie and that’s final, I just have to find a way to make her say yes,”

He replied. Yes, that was the only thing he should be worried about; whether the woman he loves would say yes to his proposal, if she said yes, nothing else would matter.

“And you are not scared that they might dethrone you and make you leave Otano?”

Patrick asked. Lance knew they would not do that except they wanted to go back to being on the verge of economic bankruptcy and a failing kingdom with zero value on the global map, they needed him and everyone knew it.

“Even you know that it won’t happen, if I leave, I am not even bragging, Otano would crumble in less than a year,”

“You sound so confident,”

Patrick commented.

“Yes, I am, I know what I have done in the five years that I have been king, I know how bad it was when I came, and I am still doing my best to keep the momentum going, if they decide to take me away from the throne just because I want to be happy, everyone will suffer the loss and I would probably relocate somewhere else and build my family with Sophie,”

Lance wasn’t thinking of abandoning his people but if they decide they don’t want him because he chose Sophie, he would wash his hands off Otano and move somewhere far away and start his life as a normal person, be with Sophie, and grow old together.

“You are stubborn,”

Patrick said. he always used that card whenever he knew he wasn’t winning against him.

“You know I am,”

Lance responded.

“Why did I ever think it would be easy to be your advisor? That’s the biggest lie I ever told myself,”

“No one said It was easy to do, you assumed.”

Lance cheered. He was tired of the seriousness in the office and also missing Sophie even though she left him about an hour ago, now how did anyone expect him to carry on living if she wasn’t with him when just a few minutes of not seeing her left him missing her. He wasn’t going to let that happen.