Elle is standing at the edge of the central plaza with Thalia beside her, and she is wearing a dress that is actively dismantling my ability to function as a rational being. The fabric is white, and it catches every source of light in the plaza and fractures it, throwing back fragments of color that shift with each breath she takes.
Her red hair is loose over her shoulders catching the aurora light, and she is smiling at something Peeble just said from their perch on her shoulder, and I have to stop walking because my lungs have apparently forgotten how to perform their single designated function.
I have seen her in mud-caked pants and torn shirts. I have seen her in Wynmire’s formal wear and the rebellion’s makeshift armor. I have seen her naked in a room where the walls bloomed and petals fell from the ceiling. None of that prepared me for this. She is the most devastating thing I have ever looked at.
I cross the plaza. I don’t remember deciding to move. One moment I am standing at the entrance to the central ring, and the next I am in front of them. I'm close enough to see the aurora light shifting in Elle’s eyes, close enough to smell the clean green scent of the Verdance in her hair. Peeble’s antennae swivel toward me and hold.
“Incoming,” they announce. “The brooding one approaches. Prepare for intense eye contact and a probable loss of motor function.”
I ignore them. I turn to Thalia first, because I am trying to be the kind of man who acknowledges his daughter before losing himself entirely in her mother, and because she deservesthat. Thalia is wearing deep emerald green, and she looks like the city grew her from its spine, and my chest does something complicated that has nothing to do with tactics or threat assessment.
I lean down and press a kiss to her cheek. “You look lovely,” I tell her.
She blinks. The expression on her face cycles through surprise, warmth, and something fragile that she covers quickly. “Thank you,” she whispers.
Then I turn to Elle, and everything else ceases to exist.
“Hi,” she says. The same word she used the first night in our chamber, and it undoes me the same way, every single time.
I take her face in my hands and kiss her. When I pull back, her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are bright and a small cluster of white flowers has bloomed spontaneously on the root-path directly beneath our feet.
“Hi,” I say.
“You just kissed me in front of the entire city.”
“I did.” I haven't let go of her face. My thumbs trace her cheekbones. “You are wearing a dress that makes it physically impossible for me to be reasonable.”
“So, what are you?”
“Yours. Violently. Irrevocably.”
Peeble clears their throat with theatrical emphasis. “And on that note, I’ll be at the food tables. Drowning my discomfort in pastries. Pretending I didn’t just witness a man’s soul leave his body in real time.” They hop off Elle’s shoulder and are gone.
Thalia watches us with an expression she’s trying very hard to keep neutral and failing. Her mouth twitches. “You two are exhausting.” But her eyes are warm.
“Get used to it,” I tell her.
She shakes her head. “I’ll be with the musicians. Try not to cause a scene.”
She walks away toward the music, and for a moment I watch her go. The emerald gown. The loose dark hair. The way she carries herself through this city like it was built around her bones.
My daughter.
Then Elle takes my hand and pulls my attention back to her, where it belongs.
“Dance with me,” she says.
“I was about to ask.”
“Liar. You were going to gawk at me all night with your mouth open. I’m saving us both the time.”
Fair.
The music has shifted from the fast, bright rhythms of earlier into something slower and deeper. I pull her close. Her hand finds my shoulder. Mine finds her waist, and the dress shimmers under my fingers, warm and alive, the material responding to contact.
“The dress is flirting with you,” Elle says.
“The dress has excellent taste.”
