"You've been planning this."
"It's the only thing I want." His fingers close harder around mine. "I am done treating later as a promise the world intends to keep."
He drops to one knee on the grass.
He doesn't kneel. Not for lords. Not for courts. Not in all the time I've known him. He kneels for me on the damp grass, and my throat closes.
"Will you marry me?"
"Yes."
"Celeste."
"I said yes. I've been sure since the desk."
His mouth twitches. On one knee, in the grass, with his composure cracking. "The desk."
"Don't make it weird."
"I'm not making it weird. I'm proposing."
"You already proposed. I already said yes. You're still on the ground."
He stands. He pulls me up with him. I'm against his chest before I've finished standing, my head under his chin, his hand spread across my back.
The crescent mark flares between us. Both of them. The garden brightens by a degree, the crimson bleeding through our shirts for one slow pulse before it dims. His mouth finds my forehead. My temple. The corner of my jaw.
"Thank you," he says against my hair.
"For saying yes?"
"For not making me wait."
I laugh against his chest. It comes out wet. I let it.
His arms tighten. We stand there. His chin on my head. My hand on his chest where the mark pulses steady beneath the fabric.
After a while, I pull back.
"I told Elena I'd come tonight."
His thumb traces my jaw once. "Go. I'll see you after."
I walk toward the medical wing.
Elena is at her station. She's positioned herself in the main bay with a tray of supplies already prepared, the vials labeled and dated in her careful handwriting.
She looks up when I enter.
"Sit."
I sit on the edge of the exam bed. Elena pulls the rolling stool close. She takes my arm and turns it, finding the vein at the inside of my elbow. She managed donors and drew blood for years before Marcellus turned her. The needle work is muscle memory.
"Maximus came to me tonight," she says. She ties the tourniquet. "Elevated skin temperature progressing since you returned from Thessivane. Exhaustion patterns inconsistent with any vampire he's observed. Nausea after the Veil crossing that he noted at the time." The needle slides in. The vial fills. "He's been watching you for weeks."
"I know."
The second vial fills. She removes the needle. Presses cotton to the inside of my elbow.
