As they reached the temple gates, Reeve guided her off the road and into the forest instead of to the place she had come to consider her home. Nerves mounting, Celeste reached for her locket for the first time since she’d woken, but there was no cold, thrumming metal to cling to. She stopped short—how had she not noticed it was missing? It had been days, and yet she’d not felt the absence of the pendant about her neck nor had she missed the presence of dark arcana.
“Reeve?” she said, shaken as she tapped at her chest. “Where is it? Where did it go?”
“It broke,” he answered quickly, fishing the chain and arcane metal out of his own pocket and handing it over. “I thought it would upset you to see, but you hadn’t asked so…”
She took the locket, the hinge crooked so that it could no longer close. Not even a vague sense of arcana pulsed around it. Her eyes flicked back up to his.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll keep you safe.”
She leaned on him a little harder as they went deeper into the darkness of the forest. In the wake of their voices, the wood was full of twittering birds and creatures scurrying through the brush. Celeste rubbed the place her locket normally rested, hollowness settling into her chest until they came to a clearing.
The cottage was unchanged from the day they discovered it. Celeste inhaled the sweet smell of the forest around them and released Reeve’s arm, taking a step toward the abandoned cabin. Just like before, she was drawn to something inside, something friendly and kind behind its door. Its window boxes were broken, its roof needed significant repairs, and the steps up to the porch had been smashed, but it was far from a hopeless case, and perhaps with a little help, it could be beautiful again.
“The temple isn’t for us,” said Reeve quietly from behind her. “But this place could be, if you wanted.”
She turned, and Reeve was holding out a key. It glinted in a shaft of sunlight as he offered it to her and lowered himself down onto one knee.
Celeste was struck still standing there in the forest. Amber eyes stared up at her, full of all the things they almost never held, fear and fragility and desperation, but there was that warmth too, that affection he was such an expert at filling her up with.
In the days since she’d woken, Celeste had watched him closely, and she’d wanted him even more than before, but she had to be careful, had to be sure she was protecting them both. Their shared duty was over, and while she knew he would never attack her, she did not want Sir Reeve, Holy Knight of Valcord, to feel obligated to any other oaths he made now that there was nothing that tied them together.
But this—she swallowed the lump in her throat—this would certainly tie them together.
His hand shook as he held out the key. “Celeste, may I ask you a question?”
She grinned so wide that her face hurt, and then there was a shove at her back that made her stumble right into his outstretched arms with a yelp.
Celeste landed in his lap, whipping her head back to see what had pushed her, and there was a black haze flitting where she had stood. She gasped, throwing arms around Reeve’s neck and squeezing, but then the shadow twisted itself as if to ask if she recognized it.
She remained tucked up against Reeve but lifted a hand and flicked her wrist, and the noxscura responded in kind. “You didn’t leave?” she whispered. “Even though I was so awful to you and wanted you to go? You stayed.”
The noxscura spun around her playfully and then dispersed. Celeste rubbed her chest again. Why hadn’t she felt her locket missing? Was it because…because it had never really gone?
She pulled her hand through the air, and Reeve’s eyes went wide, his fingers around her tightening.
A shadow emerged from behind him, and wrapped up in its tendrils was the key.
“Oh, my goodness.” Celeste held out her hand, and the noxscura placed the key in her palm. “That’s a lot better than I could do before, huh?”
Reeve hesitated, still kneeling with her in his lap as the noxscura once again scattered itself in the air around them. “Ima’riel said it should have taken you a whole moon to recover, but it barely took a week.”
Celeste nodded, biting her lip.
“You don’t need your locket anymore to command noxscura, and you were skilled enough to kill Syphon all on your own anyway.”
“Well, that did almost kill me too, and I couldn’t have done it without the pin you gave me, and—”
“No, Celeste,youdid that.” He squeezed her, looking earnestly into her eyes before his gaze flicked down to the key in her hand. “You’re much stronger now, and you don’t…you don’t need me.”
Celeste touched the little scar on his forehead, tipping his head back up. “You’re right, Reeve, I don’t need you, but I do want you.” She tucked the key into the front of her dress and threw her other arm around his neck. “I want you more than anything else in the entire realm and every plane of existence.”
It was much nicer to be wanted than needed, Reeve discovered in that moment, and his smile was so wide the hint of a second dimple formed in his other cheek.
“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
