The crowd made a sound I hadn’t heard from them yet. Not surprise, not laughter. Something quieter.
I thought they might understand now. Understand this world we were trying to build together, because they wouldn’t completely accept me in her world or her in mine.
We came around the far end, and I felt her hand shift—a small signal, the one she’d taught me—and I moved behind her, hands finding her waist, and we transitioned without breaking stride.
Her back against my chest for just a moment, both of us still moving, and I bent my head to say quietly into her hair, “You came.”
“Of course I came,” she murmured back, and stepped away from me into open ice, turning to face me with her hands raised.
The press lift.
I skated toward her, caught her at the waist as she placed her hands on my shoulders, and lifted her in one smooth motion. No hesitation, no adjustment. She rose above me, feet pointed, back straight, arms lifting to extend like wings, and I held her there as I continued to move—completely steady, completely certain—and thought about the first time I’d done this in her living room, and she’d saidyou didn’t even flex.
I didn’t have to flex.
She wasn’t something to strain against. She was something to hold.
The crowd erupted. I heard my teammates hollering up in the stands—Torrk producing a sound I was fairly certain made a few of those hoity-toity matrons shriek—and I lowered her slowly, letting her feet find the ice.
We were already moving again before the applause settled.
The platter lift was the one that had taken the longest to trust—hers, not mine. She had to fall forward into my hands, face-down, her weight fully committed before I caught her. There was no halfway with the platter. You either trusted or you didn’t.
She trusted.
Her weight settled across my palms, and I raised her, horizontal, and turned slowly in the spot the way I’d done that first evening in her apartment when I said I wanted to see what it looked like. She’d told me to hold still then. Now she laughed—breathless, airborne—and stretched her arms out wide, and I turned another slowrevolution because I still wanted to see what it looked like, and it looked likeher.
I set her down, and we moved into another rotation.
She was pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, the way she always was after the lifts, her honey-blonde curls flying behind her because she’d come straight from the gala instead of taking the time to change into her costume or put her hair up.
But…I liked it. I mean, I always liked her hair down, but now? With me in my jersey and her in her cocktail dress, we look like we’d both stepped out of our worlds into this one.
I don’t know what had changed, and why my Mate’s eyes sparked with exultation, but my heart swelled in answer. I had to believe my prayers would be answered, and we’d find a way to be together.
We skated two more laps, side by side, hands joined, matched stride for matched stride. No performance now. No choreography. Just thetruthof two people who had spent weeks learning to occupy the same ice, and had discovered they didn’t want to leave it.
At the far end of the rink, she slowed.
She turned to face me.
In her eyes I saw the question—not doubt, just asking—and I gave her the only answer I had.
“Do you trust me, Princess?”
The corner of her mouth curved.
She skated backward, away from me, putting the full length of the ice between us. The crowd went so quiet I could hear the refrigeration hum beneath the ice. Joshua had stopped moving entirely. My teammates had gone still in their seats.
She was at the far end now.
She turned.
And I saw it in her eyes, the complete and absolute trust.
Thelove.
How had I doubted? How had I hesitated in telling her that she was mine, and I was hers?
