"That Maggie Ross. Maggie came to a charity fundraiser here a couple years ago and she and Penny hit it off. They had a lot in common. Anyway, so her husband, Maggie's, I mean, is involved with this organization, the Gladiator Corporation? And they've got an architecture firm under their umbrella, so Maggie hooked me up with them. I have the idea the money is going to…appear."
"I'd like money to just appear for me!"
Laurie chuckled. "Yeah, me too, but the Faire probably needs it more than I do. Maggie told me to get bids from other firms, but apparently people at this Gladiator Architecture place already know about shifters, and given everything, that's probably safer."
"Yeah." Briana exhaled and slowly nestled against Laurie's chest again. The air was cooling off with sunset, and although the actual pub was still noisy and busy, there were fewer people on the grounds now. She could almost feel threads of stress melting out of her, although some of them held on as she said, "Everybody I know has been keeping an eye on social media. Nobody's seeing much talk about shifters on the forums oranything. I can't decide if that means we're safe enough, or if we're just looking in the wrong places."
"I know that one guy—Alan-a-dale, I forget his real name—nobody's been able to even find him. He's gone completely silent on social media, which is a little freaky because apparently he used to be online all the time. There are some others who saw us and who were really scared or upset who have also gone quiet, but not like out of town disappeared quiet. Just like holed up angry quiet."
"That doesn't exactly fill me with confidence on either front," Briana admitted. "You don't think anybody would have…I don't know…taken careof Alan-a-dale, do you?"
"I don'tthinkso," Laurie said with more passion than confidence. "I don't know. There's probably a less insane answer, though. Maybe he just couldn't handle it and left town. Honestly there was a minute there where I thought Peter was actually gonna."
"That would've been awful. I don't know him very well, but he's been a part of the Faire forever. Even without his fiddle, think of the institutional knowledge about running the place that would be lost. I'm glad he came to terms with it. I feel like we got really lucky," Briana said with a sigh, her voice low. "I really thought we'd be facing ruin. Not just the Faire, but shifters. It feels like maybe we skirted by disaster."
"Yeah. I know none of us would have taken the risk if we hadn't been in the middle of a disaster anyway, but…yeah. I thought there would be so much blowback. But it's been over a week now, so maybe we're okay. I think everybody's going to be on edge for a while, though."
"We can't live like we're going to be exposed at any moment, though. We'd have to…" Briana shook her head, smiling. "I don't know. Go live in the hills forever."
"Which would suit you just fine, wouldn't it?"
She laughed. "No! There are no forges in the hills! Ilikemetalworking! And I think it's a little late for us to disappear into a rainforest and pretend we've never had contact with the modern world. I mean, species-wise. Maybe you and I could, but imagine how upset our enormous families would be."
"You know I still have to meet your enormous family, right?"
Briana groaned. "Yes. We can go up to Boulder in the fall, after the Faire, and you can meet all eleventy million of them. Although there's only like two million of them compared to your family."
"And you haven't even met Steve and Charlee. Although the whole family is going to visit them in December, if you want to come along. Charlee's pregnant and my mother wants to descend upon them and grandmother them to death, or something."
"That sounds…" Briana paused, then said, "very nice," in a judicious tone.
Laurie laughed out loud. "Somehow that sounded like 'the seventh circle of Hell,' the way you said it." He groaned, stretched, and groaned again. "Okay, I'm afraid this whole new 'more responsible Laurie' thing is making me feel like I should go help clean up."
"You've been going a million miles an hour with everything all week. You deserve an hour of lying around." Briana got up anyway, offering him a hand and stealing a kiss once he, too, was on his feet. "You should be proud of yourself," she told him quietly. "You've really made a difference this past week."
"Imagine what I could've done if I hadn't been a layabout for years," he said ruefully, but Briana shook her head.
"Stop that. Nobody can change what's already happened. You and me, we're about looking forward, okay? We're about doing better next time. That's what matters."
Laurie gazed down at her, his dark eyes serious, although a smile pulled at his mouth. "You're amazing, you know that?"
"You know, I kind of do?" Briana grinned up at him. "C'mon, let's go make the best of the moment, okay? Today was a really good day, and I feel like it's going to be the first of many."
"Yeah? Well, then, who am I to argue?" Laurie glanced toward the pub again. "I'll not argue as soon as the dishes are done, okay?"
Briana laughed, took his hand, and went to do the dishes with her fated mate.
Chapter 26
Five Weeks Later
Alis Capellas made a beautiful bride.
She wore white, which Briana hadn't been sure she would, what with being nationally famous (at least in Renaissance Faire terms) as the Black Knight. Her gown was full-on Renaissance fairy tale, with a false corset bodice laced in greens, and a thin gauzy green overlay that gathered in flowers partway down the ivory skirt. The sleeves were of the same gauze, light and floaty with long swoops, and her veil was of similar material, set into a flowery tiara. She came down the summery aisle with flawless posture, her smile brimming with tears as Jon, at the flower-covered altar, put a hand over his heart and gazed at her, dumbfounded.
He was mostly in white Renaissance garb, too, also trimmed in green; their wedding party wore the reverse, green with white trim, which looked spectacular on Alis's twin sister, Jasmine, who was the maid of honor. Laurie was Jon's best man, and if Briana privately thought he looked even more handsome than the groom, then that was probably as it should be. The othertwo Torben brothers and their cousin Liam made up the rest of Jon's party, so Briana had gotten to meet Steve and Charlee, who had flown in from New York to attend. Laurie was right: they all looked almost exactly alike, just differing slightly in size and more dramatically in hair styles.
Charlee wasn't part of Alis's entourage, although Laurie's cousin Ashley and the two Sixty Pix band members who had become part of the Torben clan were. Alis had apologized for not including Briana, though Bree had insisted that was absurd. They'd only met a few weeks earlier, and the party had already been set by then, even if circumstances had jostled the arrangements a little.
