Up for Heir - Stella Starling Page 0,99

of course, that he’d ever want Eddie to be truly uncomfortable, but Leo loved seeing his little librarian’s light shine through despite his nervousness.

Eddie was just so… Eddie, and even if it was inevitable that he would eventually learn to navigate the formality and protocol necessary for all members of the royal family, Leo trusted that Eddie would never lose the sweetly fierce core of utter goodness and authenticity that had drawn Leo to him in the first place.

And a lifetime of that? Leo couldn’t wait.

He squeezed Eddie’s hand as the two of them stepped up onto the dais, taking their places behind the king and queen. Leo knew that the official engagement announcement had been scheduled to occur earlier, but he felt no remorse at all for delaying things. What he did feel, and it was a first for him, was a rising tide of… well, of joy. There was just no other word for it.

“I love you, Eddie Blom,” he murmured, leaning down to press a kiss to Eddie’s temple and giving zero figs about the fact that overt displays of affection weren’t supposed to be a part of the announcement ceremony.

He never had liked the restrictions of protocol—had pushed back, dodged, or outright rebelled against them for most of his life—but even if some of his past choices may have been slightly ill-advised, when Eddie turned to beam up at him, his happiness glowing like the rays of the sun, Leo knew for sure that following his heart wasn’t one of them. Loving Eddie would always be the right choice.

When Leo had first been told that the Royal Ball was to include his engagement announcement, he’d wanted nothing more than to revolt against the unwelcome duty, but marrying Eddie had become so much more than just a duty. Now, there was nowhere else he wanted to be, and even though the moment Eddie had said yes to him up in his suite was the true moment it had become official, as the vast ballroom quieted and the Master of Ceremonies began the formalities, Leo’s heart swelled. Not just with love for the man beside him, but from the utter rightness of publicly sharing that love with all of Rosavia.

Leo picked his brothers out of the crowd as the king began to speak. Wren winked at him; Jules, one arm wrapped around the visiting Thedian prince’s waist, raised a glass; Sander stood next to a man Leo had never seen before, eyes sparkling; and Ben… well, Ben was nowhere to be seen, but that was par for the course.

“It is with our genuine pleasure that Queen Aubrey and I present to you our most dearly beloved son and heir, Crown Prince Leopold Octavius Ambrose van Rosavia, and his fiancé, Edvin Elias Blom, on the happy occasion of their official engagement,” the king said, somehow managing to imbue the formal words with a genuine warmth that unexpectedly made Leo’s eyes sting.

“They… they kn-kn-know my middle name?” Eddie whispered, eyes going wide.

Leo bit back a laugh, squeezing his hand. Adorable.

“Sorry,” Eddie mouthed, immediately flushing pink and furtively glancing around as he pressed his lips together as if to hold in any further unscripted outbursts.

Leo wasn’t sorry, though. Not in the slightest. He was delighted on every level to have Eddie by his side, and after his mother added her traditional lines of welcome and confirmed the royal blessing of her station on the union, the king and queen moved to stand on the side of the dais.

Leo and Eddie stepped forward, and Leo grinned, lifting an elegant coronet from the hands of a liveried attendant. Earlier, when his own coronet had been delivered to his suite, Eddie’s reaction had been priceless… it was why Leo had failed to mention that Eddie would be getting a “crown” of his own. And when Eddie’s eyes widened, Leo was even more glad that he’d talked the king and queen into breaking with protocol enough to allow Leo to present it to him, even though normally that was an honor conferred on a consort by the reigning monarchs.

“Darling,” he said, which drew a low murmur from the crowd since it most definitely wasn’t the traditional address used for this situation. There was also a muffled squee from, if Leo wasn’t mistaken, one of the beaming Blom siblings who were practically bouncing with glee near the front of the dais.

Eddie’s eyes darted to Leo’s coronet, then to the one Leo held. “Is that… is th-th-that