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“Are you trying to get me to change my mind?” Jack cracked a smile. “Because I hate to tell you, after that speech, after knowing what you’ve done for her, no one else will ever compare. I might as well throw her in a nunnery because if you don’t take her off my hands, no one will. I’ll forbid it.”
“Bloody hell, Jack.” Anna swatted him in the belly. “Now is not the time for your warped sense of humour.”
He chuckled, holding out his arm for Neri to go to him. “Come here, little fish. I think Aslan has something he wants to ask you.” His smile widened. “He’s already kneeling and seems to be struggling to stand—which probably has to do with what I did to him. I truly am so sorry about that.” Flicking me a look, he added, “The moment you’ve asked my daughter your very important question and she’s given you her equally important answer, I will do whatever it takes to put you back in one piece. After all, I can’t have Neri hating me for hurting her future husband, can I?”
He suddenly laughed, transforming the strange night of tension and stress. “Fuck me.” He shook his head as Neri drifted into his outstretched arm, cuddling close. “You told me this would happen, Nerida. You warned me, and I didn’t listen.”
“When I was twelve, in the corridor?”
“You said you’d end up marrying him.”
Wiping away her tears, Neri glanced up at her father with a grin. “Believe me now?”
“I believe I still need to get you tested. All those nudges and knowings. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were a witch.”
“Not a witch,” I murmured. “A siren.”
Anna sucked in a breath, and Jack stopped chuckling.
The world fell away.
Jack and Anna faded.
The only person I saw was her.
Neri bit her bottom lip as I raised onto my knees and presented the ring I’d hunted hours for. Living in a coastal town made it relatively easy to find ocean-inspired jewellery. But this one? This almost hummed with the salty power of the sea, the waves forever destined to crash over her fingers, bringing us together like it did that fateful day, again and again, always returning us to one another.
I didn’t care that I’d already done this part.
If I added up all the times I’d asked this girl to marry me, I’d guess this was the fifth or sixth attempt.
But I couldn’t deny having Jack and Anna witness this, knowing they accepted me, after everything? It made my very marrow vibrate with joy that’d been so elusive to me, so hidden beneath grief and worry and endless, awful fear.
Kneeling before the three Taylors, a smile of pure happiness cracked my bleeding lip, and my breath caught as I murmured, “Nerida Taylor, Nerida Avci, I think I was born already falling in love with you. I was halfway fallen before we’d even met, and the moment we did, I crashed at your feet and never got up. I married you a month ago, but you’ve been mine for far longer than that. If I have to propose to you every day for the rest of my life to somehow make a true marriage happen, then I will. I will never get sick of loving you. Never get sick of being so in awe of you. You know my life is yours, canim. You’ve stolen every shred of my heart, and I’m asking you to take the rest of me. Take my bones, my breath, my every last piece because I’m nothing without you. Will you...will you marry me?” A small smirk lifted my lips. “Again.”
Anna pressed her hands to her mouth as Neri stepped out of Jack’s arms and dropped to her knees before me. Both her parents backed up, giving us space, but I only had eyes for Neri.
I couldn’t look away from her.
From the starlight in her hair and the endless sparkle of her soul in her eyes...she’d never been more beautiful.
Never been so stripped back and spirit-bare, never opened herself so fully. She gave every piece of herself, right there in her parents’ garden, and I gathered up every fragment and hoarded them.
She’d never get them back.
I would keep her heart safe, all while she kept mine.
A trade.
A bargain.
A promise.
It was her and me now.
For life.
Forever.
Her eyelashes glittered with unfallen tears as she held out her left hand.
Gritting my teeth so I didn’t embarrass myself with another sob, I cradled her shaking fingers. We both flinched, gasping at the sting, the zap, the bone-throbbing snap of home and heart, forever locking us into place.
This felt different.
This felt so unbelievably real.
“I took you that night, and I take you again,” she whispered, making me shiver. “I promised to love you until my last day. I vowed to keep you hidden in plain sight. None of that has changed. No amount of time will ever stop how I feel about you, Aslan. This is us, giving in to fate.”
