He'd set up lights.
For her.
*It's practical,* she told herself. *We can't dance in the dark. He's just being sensible.*
But the flutter in her stomach disagreed.
She made herself keep walking. Down the main path, past the wine shop with its hand-painted sign, past the barn where they stored the barrels. The ground beneath her feet shifted from gravel to packed earth as she approached the bridge over the creek, then to soft moss as she entered the forest.
The grove swallowed her like a held breath.
Inside, the lanterns were everywhere—tiny glass orbs strung between branches, casting pools of soft golden light across the clearing. The effect was… intimate. Private. Like stepping into a world where only two people existed.
And standing in the center of that world, watching her approach with an expression she couldn't read, was Thallos.
He'd dressed up. Not formally, just a loose white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows and the hem tucked into a wideleather belt, but it was more effort than she'd seen him make before. His hair was damp, like he'd recently bathed, and there was something almost vulnerable about the way he held himself. Careful. Uncertain.
*He's nervous too,* she realized.
The thought was absurdly comforting.
"You came."
His voice was soft. The grove seemed to absorb the sound, wrapping around them like a blanket.
"I said I would."
"I know. I just…" He shrugged, a gesture that was meant to look casual and didn't quite manage it. "I wasn't sure."
Neither was she, if she was being honest. She'd changed her mind a dozen times on the walk over. She'd come up with increasingly elaborate excuses to turn around. She'd very nearly texted him from the end of the Sandersons' driveway to claim a sudden bout of food poisoning.
But she was here now.
She looked around the grove, taking in the lanterns, the cleared space in the center, the soft moss underfoot. "You didn't have to do all this."
"I wanted to." He moved toward her, then stopped himself, maintaining a careful distance. "The grove is… it's important to me. I wanted it to look its best."
There was something in his voice, some weight behind the words, that made her want to ask questions. But his expression suggested he wasn't ready to answer them, so she let it go.
"It's beautiful," she said instead. And meant it.
The tension in his shoulders eased slightly. "I brought wine, if you want some. To settle the nerves."
"My nerves are perfectly settled."
He raised an eyebrow.
"They're mostly settled," she amended. "Reasonably settled. Settled-adjacent."
The corner of his mouth twitched. "So wine would be helpful."
"Wine would be extremely helpful, yes."
He gestured toward a blanket spread near the edge of the clearing, where a bottle and two glasses waited. It was thoughtful. Considerate. The kind of careful attention that made her chest ache in a way she didn't want to examine too closely.
They sat, and he poured, and for a moment there was only the quiet sounds of the grove—birds settling for the night, leaves rustling overhead, the distant hum of insects in the meadow beyond.
"You don't have to do this," he said finally. "The dance, the lessons, any of it. We could tell the committee I twisted my ankle. No one would question it."
