A Fairy Story

"Really?" Diana gushed. When Cameron smiled, and nodded, she squealed with glee. "That's wonderful!"

"How old are you?" Tanya asked. "You look to be my age!"

"I'm old enough to be your mother if my parents had an insane notion of marrying me off before I came of age." Alexis snorted. "I'm sixteen years older than you are."

"How come you haven't married yet?" Diana asked with growing curiosity.

"Yes..." Cameron added, looking down at Alexis as he held her. "You never did answer my question completely last night; why aren't you married off yet?"

"Oh, believe me, father tried multiple times," Alexis said with a roll of her eyes. "He tried when I came of age, but my suitor said that I was too tomboyish and headstrong for him. When I was around your age, Tanya, about twenty-one, my next suitor was upset that I could wield a sword better than he could. Eventually father just gave up and I'd already developed a reputation of sleeping around with the Knights, Guards, and Soldiers. So, father let me do what I wanted and eventually made me a Knight so that I'd be of some use to the Kingdom." She looked up at Cameron with a wry grin. "Although... he did make one last try, five years ago, to hand me off to a certain recently widower ruler that he thought I'd make a good match for."

"Who?" Tanya started to ask and then got it at once. "Oh. Right. Father."

"I don't even remember the conversation, to be honest." Cameron admitted.

"To be fair, you did just have a pretty emotional blow dealt to you at the moment," Alexis pointed out.

"Well," Cameron leaned forward to get off the wall. "Let's not just sit here gabbing. Let us eat breakfast here and welcome our new member of the family and then we'll go down to the village to make our proclamations."

"The sooner, the better," Tanya said with a bark of laughter, "before the kingdom gets the notion that you slept with a man and not a woman. Poor Jeeves looked like he saw a ghost!"

"It doesn't matter," Cameron said dismissively. "After we declare the upcoming wedding, the first proclamation that Alexis and I will make as a betrothed couple is that those labeled 'Fairy' will be free to love and marry whom they choose. So let them think, for a time, that I slept with a man."

"Well, it's too late anyway," Diana said, she was looking out over the balcony and pointing where three of the region's well known bards were about to sing down in the village. "The O'Danny girls look like they are about to let the secret out."

The four of them gathered on the balcony to watch the busty redhead, the curvy and sultry blonde, and the petite raven-haired girl warm up their voices at the castle gates before launching into their latest tale of a dragon, the hero that slayed it, and the subsequent night of pleasure that HE spent with the King of Braemidora.

THE END.