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I knew the truth—that I’d give anything, any limb, any life, any realm, to bring Arwen back. That I would shear the skin from my own bones, tear the world to pulp to hold her in my arms even just one more time—
“Shh.” His words muffled against me. Those lips. That dark, bearded chin. “My love,” he murmured. “I’m here.”
“If I go to you…If I hold you…” His voice broke on the word and I began to cry in earnest. “Arwen…” His next words were said so low, his tormented expression was the only proof I’d not imagined them. “It will break me.”
“Come here,” I whispered, scooting to the side carefully. “And I will put you back together.”
“I’m mostly in it for the banter.”
This made me chuckle
“I’m here. You’re here, and we’re together,” he mumbled, rocking his hips a little as if he weren’t fully in control. “Arwen, I love you. I’m here.”
Had I bypassed Acorn’s squawking and hurtled into the hallway with nothing but a decorative pillow to cover myself, dark-winged lighte surging from my bare shoulders and arms, and roared at the guard on duty to tell me that instant where the fuck my wife was—even though Arwen was not my wife and I’d never seen the shaking kid before? Yes, yes, and…yes.
“Are you going to help or…?” Chastened, I opened drawer after drawer and felt around for the tome, fishing unashamedly through Mari’s unmentionables. The two texts I found sandwiched between all the dainty lace were both recipe books. One was entirely about pies. I was honored to be this woman’s friend. I waggled the books at her. “I need to understand the organizational choices that were made here.”
I’d been right, when I returned to Shadowhold, to fear that I’d changed. I had. But the woman I was now—walking past wrought-iron fences wreathed in greenery and corner taverns adorned with flowerpots—this woman was all the things I’d hoped one day I would be: a little more worldly, a little less afraid to ask for what I wanted, sympathetic to the ambiguities of life and the complicated choices we all faced. Not necessarily brave, but aware of the fact that it was courageous just to get up each day when there was so much to fear…Maybe most importantly—this woman liked herself.
“They’re wrong to assume you’re a monster. They are. But if you continue to behave as one…why should they ever stop?”
I knew he would come through when I read this line
“We can’t approach this war with this…fear that’s seized us any longer. We have to fight for something.” Kane’s eyes found mine and my heart opened up just a little. “We’ll fight armed with hope. Hope for something better than just his death. And when that hope feels out of reach…” Kane studied the quiet, dimly lit dining room. All the faces latched on to his every word. Briar’s small smile. Dagan’s crinkled eyes, Leigh’s youthful ones. All the age and experience and loss and fear and joy and love that we shared, collectively. “We rely on one another.
“It kills me, bird, that I cannot promise you any of it. All I can promise you is myself—my love, my respect, my devotion—every day that we have together, and every day that exists beyond then.” Kane’s eyes gleamed. “In life, in death, my soul is yours. Arwen, will you be my wife?” My chest expanded. I could hardly breathe past the swell of it.
“I’m only afraid of being without you. In death. In life. It’s all the same to me if we aren’t together.”
It was moments like that—the mere latching of her olive eyes onto mine almost sending me over the edge—in which I realized how utterly at this woman’s mercy I was. She could have told me to throw myself off our balcony. I would have been plummeting through winter air before she’d finished the command.
I was a lucky bastard. I’d fallen in love with a woman who opened up my mind in ways I’d never imagined. Who showed me how strength could be found in tenderness, or how the vulnerability of giving yourself over to someone could be a mighty, fortifying force. I’d fallen in love with a woman who was my friend. A light in pitch-darkness. A bird to guide me home.
Sobs… fucking sobs
And when I couldn’t walk to Kane, I’d climbed, fallen, crawled…I’d found my way back to him time and time again.
“Without further ado, as I am old and my knees are already barking, let us get on with it. Kane, do you take Arwen as your wife, to love and to cherish, so long as you both shall live?”
Love Dagestan so so so much
sparkling crown. Dimples in full effect. “I had it made for you.” “When?” We’d been a little busy. “After I had more fun trapped inside a wine cellar than I’d had in two hundred years of living.”
“Forgive me,” I murmured, pulling her close, feeling consciousness slip from her. Smelling honeysuckle and orange blossom for the last time. “I love you. I’ll love you wherever I am, whatever I am. Always.”
