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D elphine Delacroix was dead.
well, frankly, how icky noxscura truly was.
The sun didn’t have wings, didn’t need them to ascend every morning into the sky to warm the earth and light the way, but she imagined it would certainly help on days when rising felt like too much.
Maybe, just maybe, Delphine’s departure from the plane was not the worst occurrence in the history of the realm.
slightly-less-dark darkness.
And tall, pale, and dark-haired wasn’t her type anyway.
“You shouldn’t lock him up like that,” Celeste had braved saying once when her older sister’s antics turned from regular cruelty to truly heinous. She had just delivered food to Damien, blood dripping down his face from a newly opened scar and defeat in the hollowness of his once-spirited eyes, and the words came out despite herself.
Perhaps it had been that dig, or perhaps it had been Celeste’s embarrassing affection for her older sister’s boyfriend, or perhaps just a growing desire to do the right thing, but she had made her decision then. That night, she secretly severed Delphine’s enchantments on Damien, and he finally escaped the temple after moons of imprisonment and torture. Celeste knew from experience that escaping abduction did not inspire a desire to return to it, and there was no amount of pathetic that she could play at to convince Damien to help her now, even if she told him she’d been the reason he was
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It should have been spooky, a talking urn, but she was rather comfortable around spooky things what with being one herself.
“She said some horrible things.” “Yeah, that sounds like her.” Celeste frowned, hesitating, but she couldn’t help herself. “Were they…were they about me?” The quiet that hung in the sepulcher answered first, and then the actual voice followed. “Yes. She said that it is a wonder you are related at all, that you are not the same, that you are disloyal, weak-willed, stupid, unskilled, clumsy—” “—all that, huh—” “—and perhaps worst of all, you are nice.”
everyone deserved to be cared for and tucked in one last time.
The woman slapped the bar with both hands and made Celeste jump but didn’t deter her munching.
“Don’t even think about it, Longfury.” Halfrida came bustling back, throwing down her cleaning linen on the bartop and scowling at the man. “She’s much too young for you.” “That’s only exactly what we were discussing, Miss Morn! You never know when your progeny might walk through the door on a quest to find you, so it’s best to head off the worry right away and ask.” “That is not a common concern for most folk, even those who gallivant across the realm, so long as they keep it in their trousers!” “Well, now, where’s the fun in that?” The man’s grin never faltered, and in one swift move, he
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“Don’t really have eyes, buddy,” replied the sword.
Even in the dark he could see they were nice calves.
“Oh, crickets.”
He wanted to listen to her because he’d liked the way her voice sounded, and he’d liked the way her lips moved, and he’d liked staring down at her laid out on the linens with all that black hair cascading around her lovely face. And above all of that, she just didn’t feel evil.
There she stood, his most contemptible enemy, the bane of his existence, the epitome of evil, and she was carrying…cakes?
Witches, he had to assume, did much more dastardly things than make cake.
“Wh-what was that?” “Hmm? Oh, like I said, it’s supposed to help me remember.” “Remember what?” He shrugged. “I forget, but I think maybe everything.
Celeste’s eyes weren’t grey, Reeve realized in the closeness and darkness of the tiny room, they were silver. He had never seen silver eyes before, nothing that shined like that outside of magic itself. He peered into them as if he could glean something more, but all he saw was starlight glittering back.
Perhaps she should give up witchcraft for a life in theater.
He looked as if he’d been told the gods weren’t really gods at all but only fae playing at the idea.
No longer stuffed under the bed, though, was the book he’d been left with, pages once again gathered and put in proper order. Reeve picked it up off the side table and turned to where he had last left off. The story had been getting good, and despite his heavy eyelids, he wanted to know what happened next.
Dark gods, the rolled-up sleeves.
she was lonely, and no one would know because it wasn’t like she were some character being written about in a book.
Oh, that stupid smile! Why did it make her feel like honey on a steaming tea cake?
It was, of course, the very definition of playing with fire, which is a bit on the nose, even for this kind of book, but sometimes metaphors just work themselves out like that.
“No one will hurt you,” he vowed. “With credence that the sun will rise, the whole of the realm will have to cut through me before it touches you.”
“You can sleep, Celeste. I’ll be here when you wake up, I swear it.” If there ever was a time to trust a holy knight, it was when they swore.
No, love didn’t take long at all, it just took whenever it wanted to, and it held on, and it refused to relent.
“The truth is, that I think about waking up beside you,” he said, and she halted her hands’ exploration. “I think about you all the time, about how you share blueberries with Plum and how you braid your hair. I think about how you’ll hopefully stand close the next time you’re showing me how to knead dough, and about how I can ask you to lay your head in my lap again so I can touch your hair, and about how I wish you wouldn’t be afraid to tell me everything because I would never hurt you.”
Obviously, an inn with more than one bed would have been an unacceptable choice for the night’s end.
“I’m meant to worship at the altar of the sun, but it’s this light that I would be devoted to, if you would let me.”
Well, no, that certainly wasn’t the case—not when he was trying to kill her—but maybe that was how love worked. Maybe it decided things on its own and just waited for everybody else to catch up.
Ima’riel had explained that the day and night were equal in length when the sweetbriars were slated to bloom. Reeve was familiar with when the sun would rise dependent on the rhythm of the seasons, winter saw shorter days and summer long ones, but he never thought the day and night were truly anything but equal. They had always seemed like two halves of a necessary whole to him, one needing the other.
“And if you’ll have me, I’d like to keep you forever,” she said, pressing a kiss to his lips, and as he picked her up and carried her away, there was no longer a single doubt in her mind—Celeste knew exactly where she belonged.
EPILOGUE WINK WINK
