It was the look of a woman who’d chosen freely, and who believed she’d made the right choice.

I drew her hand to my mouth, running my lips along her knuckles, noting the contrast of the cool crystal against her warm skin.

“You’re wearing the ring,” I said against the back of her hand. I could not bear to ask her if she liked it. Not yet, not now.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.

Thank the cursed snows of Sionnach.

“But I don’t have a ring for you,” she added.

“I don’t need your ring,” I breathed. “Just your vow.”

I knew from Aiko that there were vows in a human ceremony, though I had no idea what the actual words were supposed to be. I tried to form sentences, but they turned to ash and dust in my head, burned away by the sheer relief of seeing her here. Of having her standing before me, lovelier than starlight, happy with her ring, her groom, her life.

Luckily, I did not need to find my own words. Because my bride shared hers.

“I, Torrance Hayes, take you, Wylfrael, to be my lawfully wedded husband. In sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, for as long as we both shall live.”

She gazed at me expectantly, and I repeated the words back to her.

“I, Wylfrael of stone sky and Sionnach, take you, Torrance Hayes, to be my my lawfully wedded wife. In sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, for as long as we both-” Torrance inhaled unsteadily, and my voice cracked, “-shall live.”

“I promise to love you.” Her voice had lost its solidity and a waver crept in.

“I promise to love you,” I echoed.

“I promise to cherish you.”

“I promise to cherish you.”

“From this day forward. ’Til death do us part.”

“From this day forward. ’Til death do us part,” I vowed. I could no longer stand there and merely hold her hand. I dropped her hand, my fingers rising to cup her delicate jaw. She sighed through a thick throat and turned her face up to me as I pressed my forehead to hers and closed my eyes. I found myself speaking, my own words finally forming out of the darkness. “For this day and all days. For this night and all nights. I will love you, Torrance. Every moment. Every breath. Every heartbeat. Even if it’s only half of one.”

No doubt Aiko and the others wondered what I meant by half a heartbeat. But it didn’t matter if they understood or not. Because Torrance did.

Her hands went to my waist, then slid upwards, palms resting against my chest.

“I promise you the same.”

We stood locked in the embrace, and everything else disappeared. There was only Torrance and me and the choices we’d made. Her face in my hands, her breath on my skin. Husband and wife. Perhaps not fated, but mated anyway.

“Now what?” I asked her, unsure if there was anything else left to do.

She smiled, drawing her hands up high to wrap around my neck.

“Now you kiss me.”

Finally, a human custom I could appreciate. My smile mirrored hers as I bent down to kiss my wife for the very first time.

OceanofPDF.com

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN Torrance

Aiko had prepared enough food for ten times our number. A long crystal table in a dining room at the base of the Eve Tower was laden with meats, cheeses, various breads and pastries tinted the usual Sionnachan red. Even the wedding cake, that I’d described to Aiko, was tinted red from their flour. A while ago, I might have considered such a thing an omen. The cake to celebrate my wedding to Wylfrael the colour of blood. There was no frosting, just some kind of sticky honey glaze, which meant the red was on full display on the table.

But it didn’t bother me now. In fact, it seemed rather fitting. Blood and beauty, sweet honey and violence. Just like him and me.

Wylfrael eschewed the head of the table, sitting beside me, dragging his crystal chair so close that I could draw the back of my slippered heel along his shin bone. Aiko, Ashken, and Shoshen sat across from us, chatting merrily and drinking ale until their tails and ears began to droop with the effects of the alcohol.

Wylfrael chatted, too. He was easier and more relaxed than I’d ever seen him, a grin almost never leaving his face as he talked and slipped an effervescently grateful Brekken slices of meat. He was Earth-shatteringly (or Sionnach-shatteringly, I supposed) handsome like this. Smiling in his marvellous suit. I couldn’t stop sneaking glances at him as I ate and laughed and conversed, and more often than not, when I looked at him, his eyes were already on me.

“Excuse me,” I said, after devouring a second slice of the strange-looking and absolutely delicious cake. I’d been so nervous all day that I’d basically forgotten to pee for hours. “I’ll be right back.”

I left the dining room feeling Wylfrael’s eyes on my back the entire time.

I used a bathroom located near the dining room but realized I wasn’t quite ready to go back to the festivities just yet. The quiet was soothing, a velvety ebb over my skin punctured only by footsteps on the crystal and the swish of my skirt. I found myself climbing stairs, up, up, up, then through the tunnel and up further, past the bedroom I shared with Wylf until I stepped into the conservatory. All was dark and silent here, and I breathed out into the cool and lightless air, letting my eyes adjust. As they did, the starfinder came into view at the centre of the room. I smiled softly, remembering Wylfrael in there. The night it had fully sunk in, the kind of commitment I’d be making to him. The night that, even though I’d been grief-stricken, even though I’d thought I hated him, I’d cried in his arms and fell apart against his hand.

That seemed a lifetime ago. Wylfrael would have snorted at that, no doubt. At my puny human reasoning, my minuscule scope of time. But so much had happened since then. The wedding that had merely been a means to an end for both of us had become something different.

He had become someone different. He would have let me go.

And I had become someone different, too.

Because I’d chosen to stay.

I couldn’t even hide behind excuses like wanting to help Skalla and my friends with the council’s help. Those were benefits of this arrangement, certainly. But when I’d taken the first step towards the library, when I’d stepped through the door and walked down that aisle, I was doing it because Wylfrael stood at the end of it. Waiting for me, just like he’d promised he would.

“I thought I might find you here.”

For once, I didn’t jump out of my skin at the sudden sound of Wylfrael’s voice in the doorway.

“Hello, husband,” I said, my voice getting surprisingly choked up as I said it. I’d managed to stay mostly tear-free during the ceremony. There had been a moment, walking down the aisle, when the absence of my father at my side had made my eyes sting and my chest squeeze. But I’d just kept my watery gaze on Wylfrael and his outstretched hand through my veil, finding strength in the sight of him.

“Hello, wife,” he said. I flushed at the greeting. I’m somebody’s wife, now.

Wylfrael came up behind me, both of us facing the starfinder. I sighed and leaned back against his solid warmth.

“I had something like this back home. A telescope. My father gave it to me. It’s still in his house.” The soft smile that had danced on my face pulled downward. “I wish I could look through it just one last time.”

“Do you want me to turn on the starfinder?” Wylf asked, his hands sliding up my bare arms and coming to rest on my shoulders.

“No, that’s alright,” I said. If we opened the roof, it would get too cold in here to stay much longer, and I was enjoying being here with him. I didn’t need to take solace in the stars. I wanted to be right where I was.