Chapter 1

Last year on my birthday, Rosalyn surprised me by tricking me into thinking I had a healing assignment in an abandoned room in the castle. When I arrived, supplies in hand, all I found was a pink rose and a note to take the third book on the third shelf of the third bookshelf down from the stacks. I walked across the room, took the book down, and found a smaller note stuck to a button. "Push me" it said. Pushing the button, I stepped back a few paces when the bookshelf slid backwards and then turned sideways, revealing a series of stairs heading upward. A piece of loose leaf paper was on the third step with the words "walk up me" written on them in, now see-able in better lighting, Chris' trademark crude handwriting. There was another pink rose next to the note.

Oh, dear.

Heart pumping, I made my way up the stairs, roses in hand, and found myself in front of a door. Slowly, I opened the door and found Chris sitting on a chair, looking paler than usual, holding another rose. She smiled slowly, "oh, you found it, that's good," and stood. We broached the distance between each other and my beloved handed me the third rose. "I, um," she started nervously, "thought we could use a night alone, it's your birthday and all that," itching her neck and looking at me for approval.

I paused, not sure what to say or do. Chris wasn't very romantic; she just didn't do that sort of thing. She was more of a brawler than a lover. This was totally unexpected. Before I could speak, she turned and walked across the room and stood by the draped window. "This room hasn't been used in a lot of years. My, um, grandmother, the Queen." She stopped as I laughed at her speaking as though I did not know the empire's Matriarch, the one who I had spent so many late evenings with trying to decipher the puzzle that is her granddaughter.

Chris sighed loudly. "Anyway, this was the room which she took her wife to before they were married. Grandma showed it to me a few months ago, after the funeral, and she thought it would make a nice hideaway for us." Before I could speak, honestly I was moved by how she was opening up, she withdrew the drapes to reveal an incredible view of the town below the castle and the mountains behind it. I was speechless, blown away by this gesture. We stood at the window for a minute quietly. The view was spectacular and honestly I was genuinely moved. And getting a little horny, which was quite odd for me. I'm very shy and a bit of a prude about sex. Perhaps that is why Chris and I ended up together; she is so open and flaunts her, even for our Empire, gender ambiguity and casualness about sex. For the first time, however, I could tell that love was something she took very seriously.