Please Divorce Me, My Emperor

CHAPTER 19

Five years later.

The imperial gardens of the Sun Palace were filled with the sound of cheerful, high-pitched laughter.

A small boy with dark raven hair and bright violet eyes was running through a field of blue hydrangeas, holding a wooden toy dragon high above his head. Behind him, a little girl with honey-gold hair and a bright, infectious laugh chased after her brother, her tiny silver shoes kicking up petals in the grass.

Aurelia sat under the shade of a magnificent white oak tree, resting her head against Kaelen's shoulder as they watched their children play.

"Prince Leo is getting faster," Aurelia noted with a fond smile, taking Kaelen's hand and lacing her fingers with his. "He takes after his father—always charging forward."

"And Princess Clara has your cunning," Kaelen replied, chuckling as the little girl cleverly cut through the flowerbed to intercept her brother, tackling him into a soft pile of grass. "She let him think he was winning just to ambush him."

Kaelen lifted Aurelia's hand, pressing a soft kiss to the back of her knuckles, his gold-and-diamond ring clinking gently against her own matching band.

"Do you remember," Kaelen whispered, looking out over the flourishing empire they had built together, "when you stood in my study with a dagger hidden in your sleeve, demanding a divorce within ninety days?"

Aurelia laughed softly, turning her head to kiss his cheek. "I remember thinking you were the most arrogant, infuriating tyrant in the entire world."

"And now?" Kaelen murmured, his violet eyes locking onto hers with the exact same burning passion that had saved her life on the frozen crags of the North.

Aurelia cupped his jaw, drawing his lips down to hers in a tender, lingering kiss that tasted of sweet wine and summer afternoons.

"Now," she whispered softly against his lips as their children's laughter echoed across the golden gardens, "you are my heart, my equal, and my home. Forever and always, Kaelen."

And under the bright, eternal sun of Solaria, the Emperor and Empress stood side by side—not as ruler and subject, but as two souls forged in fire, bound by love, and reigning together forever.

THE END.