I close my eyes.
I openthem to an empty room. The bond pulls toward the garden.
I get up. Head for the medical wing.
Elena steps into the corridor ahead of me before I reach it.
"He's in the garden," she says. "Go there first, then come find me. I'll be set up."
"Why there first?"
"Because he asked me to tell you."
The east garden. Candles in the branches of the oaks, still burning.
Maximus is on the bench.
He stands when he sees me.
I cross the distance.
I sit beside him. Our thighs touch. He holds still.
"You asked Elena to tell me you were here."
"I did."
"You could have come to find me."
"I could have." His hands are in his lap. "I wanted you to come to this on your own."
I look at him. The candles catch the M and C crest on his finger. His jaw is set, and whatever he's carrying, he's holding it close.
"What is it?"
He turns toward me. He takes both my hands in both of his.
His palms are cool. The crest presses between our fingers. And his hands aren't steady.
I've seen this man hold conference rooms full of vampire lords without shifting his breathing. I've watched him stand in front of a Fae king and not flinch.
"I've had centuries," he says. "I've treated every one of them as though I'd have centuries more. As though time was something I owned and could spend whenever I chose." He pauses. "I stopped being right about that."
I hold still.
"I should have done this before the springs. Before the Veil. Before any of it. I kept finding reasons to wait because the waiting felt safe and the moment was never the right one, and I have been alive long enough to know that the right moment is the one you stop letting pass."
His thumb crosses my wrist. My pulse under his thumb. In time with his.
"You walked into my compound with contaminated blood in your veins and a sister you refused to stop fighting for. You argued with Marcellus before you'd been here a full day. You stood in front of four Fae courts and made them listen because you told them about cots and IV lines and a woman who turned her face to the wall, and you didn't flinch when every one of them looked at you like you didn't belong there." His voice drops. "You belong everywhere I am. I have known that since before I had the courage to say it."
Oh.
He's not just talking. He's asking.
My chest does something I don't have a name for. A pressure that starts behind my ribs and spreads outward, and my eyes burn, and I haven't said anything yet because my throat has closed around whatever I was going to say.
"I want to marry you." His voice is rough now. Stripped. "In front of every person in this compound who fought beside us and every lord who swore to this alliance. I want Marcellus to speak the words. I want Mira beside you. I want your name next to mine in every record that carries mine."
