Finding Her Magical King novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: The Starlite

A year later, on the last Sunday in July, the king's motorcade pulled into the Starlite.

It parked across four spaces.

I was behind the desk with my name tag on.

It said S, and nothing else, because I liked it that way.

"Check-in is at three," I said, without looking up. "You're early."

"I'm told the staff are very strict," said Anselm.

He leaned on the counter in jeans and a plain dark jacket, with a travel bag over one shoulder.

There was no crown on his head.

It lived in Highcastle now, in a glass case in the great hall.

Nobody had seen a flake of frost on it since the day it came off Thrale.

"You're on my time now," I said. "Room 12 is yours."

"I'd rather have the desk."

"The desk is taken."

He grinned and reached across it.

He kissed me in front of two truck drivers and a woman with a cat carrier.

One of the drivers applauded.

Ivor strolled in behind him, carrying a paper bag from the diner across the road.

"Don't start," he said. "I've been on the road four hours. There was a pie."

"There is always a pie," said Maeve, from the kitchen door.

She came out wiping her hands, in her own cardigan, with her reading glasses on their cord.

She hugged Anselm hard, which she did every year and never admitted to.

"You're thin," she said.

"I'm a king."

"You're thin."

"I've had four meals today."

"Then you need five."

Soot dropped off the top of the vending machine and wound himself around the king's boots.

He had put on weight in a year.

He slept in a different bed every night, and had opinions about all of them.

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