“I thought I’d left this silly part of my past behind,” she laughed softly.
“It is not a silly part of your past. It might mean little to you, but it meant the world to me.” Opening to the back cover, he tilted it toward the moonlight. “Do you see?”
Cecilia squinted at the marks there, faint pencil scratches she’d assumed were accidental scribbles. But now, looking closer, she saw they formed a pattern. A… constellation?
“Corona Borealis,” Cassian confirmed quietly. “The Northern Crown. It belonged to a princess named Ariadne. She was a dutiful daughter, obedient, proper—everything expected of her. Until she met a man who needed help escaping a labyrinth. She gave him the thread that saved his life, abandoned everything she knew for him.” He paused. “And he left her on an island while she slept.”
Cecilia furrowed her brows and then murmured, “That is quite the melancholic myth for a constellation.”
“I used to think so…” His thumb traced over the drawing. “But then I met you, and I realized I’d been thinking about it wrong. Ariadne wasn’t destroyed by being abandoned. A god found herthere—Dionysus—and he saw her worth when the hero couldn’t. Loved her fiercely enough to make her immortal. He took her crown and placed it in the heavens so everyone who looked up would see her.
“She might have been a princess once, but no one would have remembered. Now, she is immortal. Everyone who looks up at the night sky sees her. She is permanent. Eternal. So I suppose, in a way, she has claimed her place in the heavens, and nothing can take it away from her.”
Cecilia’s eyes stung. She wanted to look at the constellation, wanted to find it in the sky above them, but she couldn’t tear her gaze from his face.
“I drew this the night I left,” he said. “I wanted something to mark the moment when everything changed. When I met a woman who grew courageous enough to be herself, and fierce enough to call me on my worst impulses, and generous enough to... generous enough to wait for me when I abandoned her like the lowest cad.”
“Cassian…”
“I was going to show you in Hertfordshire. The night before I left, I kept trying to bring it up and losing my nerve. I’m not good with words. Never have been. But I wanted you to know that you changed me. That you are permanent for me, the way Ariadne is permanent in the sky. You’re my fixed point… my north star.”
She couldn’t speak. Tears spilled over, tracking down her temples into her hair. He set the book aside gently and shifted to lean over her, his thumb catching the tears.
“Don’t cry,” he whispered, but his own voice was rough.
“For someone who claims to be terrible with words, you always seem to find the right ones.” She kissed him, slow and sweet, tasting of salt water and tears and three months of happiness distilled into a single moment.
When they broke apart, Cecilia sat up, pulling him with her, and cupped his face in both hands, feeling the scratch of stubble against her palm. “I love you. I have loved you since the moment you protected me after I thrust you into scandal. I will love you when we are old and grey, and you have bored me to tears with the same travel stories for the fortieth time—”
His laugh was strangled. “That’s hardly romantic.”
“—It is honest. Because I… I need to tell you something.”
She watched him go very still beneath her hands.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. Nothing at all.” Gently, she took his hand and placed it over her stomach.
For a long moment, Cassian didn’t move. Didn’t blink. He just stared at her with those storm-grey eyes, cloudy with confusion.
Then, agonizingly slowly, realization dawned over his expression, and his hand flexed against her stomach. “...Achild?”
“Yes.”
“You… you are certain?”
Cecilia bit back her trembling laugh, “I’ve known for nearly a fortnight. I wanted to wait for the right moment to tell you. But I don’t think I will find a more perfect time.”
His eyes dropped to where his hand rested. When he looked up at her again, his expression absolutely shattered her soul into a million scintillating fractals. Wonder and terror and joy all warred for dominance. His eyes were bright, endearingly so, and when he spoke, his voice cracked.
“God, I love you so much, it terrifies me. I—I never thought I could have this. A family. Someone who stays. Someone who—”
“You have me,” Cecilia said fiercely. “You’ll always have me. And now you’ll have this child. And… perhaps a few more after.”
He laughed amid his own tears. “Poor children.” He kissed her again, desperate and grateful this time, and she tasted salt on his lips. His tears or hers, she couldn’t tell. She didn’t much care.
When they finally broke apart, he kept his hand on her stomach tenderly. Above them, the stars continued their ancient dance, the Corona Borealis among them, circling endlessly.
