We dance. Slow, turning circles in the aurora light, surrounded by couples doing the same. I am not a natural dancer. I learned the Spiral of Seasons as a child, the formal steps of court, but I never enjoyed them. Dancing requires surrender, and surrender has never come easily to me.
With her, it’s different. With her, I don’t have to think about the steps. I hold on, following the music and let her body tell mine where to go. She’s warm against me, and the dress shifts colors with every turn, catching the aurora, the lantern light, and the gold from the root-paths. She looks like she’s wearing the night sky.
Her head rests against my shoulder. Her hand slides from my shoulder to the back of my neck, her fingers curling into my hair,and the casual intimacy of that gesture does something to me that is difficult to articulate with the limited tools of language.
I lower my mouth to her ear. “Do you have any idea what this dress is doing to me?”
“Judging by the way you’re holding me, I have some idea.”
“You have no idea. The neckline alone is an act of war. I have been calculating exactly how long I have to wait before I can take you out of here without it being conspicuous, and the answer is not long enough, because every second you’re wearing this dress in public is a second I am exercising restraint that should qualify me for sainthood.”
She laughs against my neck, and the vibration of it travels through every nerve I have. “Sainthood. You. The man who just declared violent ownership of me in front of a city.”
“Saints can be possessive. I’m sure there’s precedent.”
“There is absolutely no precedent for you.”
The aurora overhead has intensified, the violet deepening to purple streaked with electric green and pale blue. I spin her once and the dress catches the light and explodes into color, and for one suspended moment she is the brightest thing in the Verdance, brighter than the Heartwood, brighter than the aurora, brighter than anything in any iteration I have walked through trying to find my way back to her. She spins back into me, and her hand finds my chest, and her eyes find mine, and we’re close enough that I can count her freckles in the shifting light.
“When we leave here, I am going to find somewhere private and I am going to remove this dress with a level of attention that will ruin you for every other experience you have ever had. I am going to take my time. I'm going to make you forget the wordtomorrowexists. And when I am finished, you are going to lie next to me and know, with absolute certainty, that you are themost thoroughly worshipped woman in any reality that has ever existed.”
Her fingers tighten on my shoulder. Her breath catches. The golden marks at her collarbones flare through the fabric, bright enough that the couple dancing nearest to us glances over.
“Then take me somewhere private. Now.”
“One more song.”
“Now, Kaelren.”
I smile against her hair. It’s not a kind smile. It’s the smile of a man who has gotten exactly what he wanted.
“As you wish.”
I lead her through a corridor as the music fades behind us, replaced by the steady hum of the Heartwood and the soft pulse of golden veins in the root-paths. The aurora light filters through gaps in the canopy overhead, painting the corridor in shifting violet and green. I walk ahead of her, her hand warm in mine. I don’t speak because if I open my mouth right now I am going to say something that will result in me pinning her against the nearest wall, and I have a specific destination in mind.
We head through an archway down a staircase carved from living wood that spirals beneath the Heartwood’s root system, and into a space that makes her go still.
It’s a garden. Underground, or what passes for underground in a city grown from a living tree. The ceiling is the underside of the Heartwood’s roots, pale and massive, curving overhead. Aurora light pours through the gaps, violet, green, and blue flooding the chamber with shifting color.
A natural spring feeds a steaming pool at the center, its surface catching the aurora and reflecting rippling bands of light. The ground is carpeted in thick, luminous moss glowing deep gold. Climbing flowers cover the walls, white petals with pale violet centers pulsing slowly with the Heartwood above, opening and closing like breath. Each movement releases a warm, heady scent, faintly narcotic.
“What is this place?” she whispers.
“The Heartwood’s root chamber.” I turn to face her, and the aurora light catches my eyes and turns the silver to violet. “Thalia told me about it. She said her parents used to come here before Bloomfall. Every cycle.”
I watch the understanding move across Elle’s face like light across water.
I take both her hands. Hold them between us. Run my thumbs across her knuckles while I look at her in the shifting aurora light, the dress throwing fragments of color across the moss, across my suit, across the charged air between us.
“I told you in the war room that I was going to marry you,” I say. “And I meant it. But I said it wrong.”
“You said it like an order.”
“I said it like a man who was afraid the chance would be taken from him if he didn’t say it fast enough.” I tighten my grip around hers.
I lift her hands to my mouth and press my lips to her knuckles, slow, one at a time.
“Elle. You came to Wynmire by accident and changed every reality that exists. You challenged me when everyone elsebowed. You made me laugh when I’d forgotten how. You scattered yourself across time to save a world that hadn’t earned you, and when I pulled you from the void piece by piece, you came back whole. Sharp. Brave. So full of light you look like the rising sun.”
