"His perimeter assessment was wrong."
"It was slightly suboptimal, which is not the same thing, and you could have told him privately." She leans against me. Her head finds my shoulder. "You're going to have to learn how not to be in charge."
I consider this. The concept of not being in charge is foreign to me in a way that goes deeper than habit. I have been in command of something since I was old enough to hold a blade. Leading the rebellion. There has always been a mission, a purpose, a tactical objective that required my attention.
There is no mission now. There is no siege.
There is a woman leaning against my shoulder that I would very much like to finally spend some quality time with.
"What do you think about spending some time at Thornwood Throne?" I ask.
Elle lifts her head. "Yeah?"
"I want to go back there. Not as a rebel leader. I want to go back there to spend my days with you."
Elle is quiet for a moment. Then she takes my hand.
"You want a home," she says.
The word takes me by surprise when she says it. "I have never had one," I say.
"Then let's make one."
Peeble stirs on her shoulder. "If I may interject, I have several opinions about home furnishing, decor, and the general aesthetic direction of any residence I am expected to inhabit. My standards are exacting. I will require my own chamber. With a window. And a small podium from which to deliver morning addresses."
"Peeble," Elle says.
"Non-negotiable."
I look at Elle. She looks at me. The wildflowers bend around us in the afternoon breeze.
"Thornwood Throne," Elle says. "Our home."
"Our home," I say.
She presses her lips to my jaw, right where the corruption marks trace the bone. A kiss that is brief and warm and carries the weight of every kiss that came before it and every kiss that will come after.
The sun drops toward the treeline. We sit in the flowers, and the sky turns amber and rose and deep blue, and we are home.
Grandma Jo's garden is in bloom.
Every flower bed is overflowing. Roses the size of my fist climb the fence in thick, fragrant walls of red and pink and white. The herb garden has gone feral: basil and rosemary and lavender growing waist-high, filling the air with a scent so strong it hits you at the gate. The elm tree stands at the center of it all, massive and ancient, its canopy throwing shade across the yard in patterns that shift with the afternoon breeze.
"The flowers are doing that thing again," Leo says, standing on the back porch with a glass of sweet tea and the particularexpression of a man who has learned to tolerate a certain amount of magical nonsense in his backyard. "The leaning thing. Toward you."
He's right. The roses along the fence are tilted in my direction, their stems curved slightly inward. They've been doing it since I arrived this morning. I stopped being unsettled by it around hour two.
"They're excited," I say.
"They're plants, Elle."
"They're excited plants."
He shakes his head and goes back inside, and Sarah catches my eye through the kitchen window and gives me a smile that says I married into this family knowing exactly what I was getting into.
The wedding is in three hours. I'm standing in Grandma Jo's garden in a pair of cutoff shorts and one of Leo's old t-shirts, and I'm getting married today.
I'm getting married today.
