“You could’ve told me. I would’ve understood the need, even if it nettled me.”
“I know,” he said quietly.
“Are all the secrets you keep from me necessary? Or is it just habit?” I searched his face. “Or do you want to keep secrets from me, specifically?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
“Will you stop keeping secrets once we’re married?”
“You’re probably right that it is a habit.” There was something playful and unexpected in his smile. “It might take some time.”
It was funny that he spoke of it taking time when we were married, as if it were not a brief waystop to secure his mission.
“You’ll tell me everything about the your schemes once we’re married?” I asked.
“Yes. But not tonight. I don’t want you to marry me in a panic.” He hesitated. “It’s a scheme, I know. A game we’re both playing. But I want you to choose to pretend. Not to feel forced.”
I took his hand in mine and began to work the ring off his finger, the one I’d thrown back at him after the fight with Ander.
“Be careful with that.” He watched me slide the ring off his finger with an amused look. “It takes so little in the midst of all this Fae trickery and magic to find yourself bound.”
“I want to be bound to you,” I said, and then, horrified—fearing he was horrified, too, though I didn’t see that on his face—I added, “while we work together.”
The thought of leaving this room without being married to him was a looming terror.
He nodded. “Listen. I’ll say my side of the vows. Then, if you are in danger, if you need the protection of our marriage, you only have to say your vows and slip on the ring. All right?”
“Yes,” I said tersely.
“But you never have to speak your side unless you?—”
I put my hand over his mouth. His eyes widened, startled, and something in his expression flickered—surprise shifting into something darker, warmer. His breath warmed my palm.
The closeness of him hit me like a physical thing. The heat of his body, the controlled tension in his shoulders, the faintest tremor in the breath he drew against my hand. “I can make my own decisions, Fear.”
He lifted his hand, wrapped his fingers around mine, and drew my hand away from his mouth. But he didn’t let go. He was looking at me with that expression I couldn’t quite read, the one that might be wonder. “I know.”
Then he knelt in front of me, still holding my hand. “I will be at your side in the darkness and when the sun rises. I bind my shadow to your shadow and my light to your light. I weave your family into mine and curse your enemies to my blade.”
Fear spoke sounding fervent, intentional, and strange tears prickled in my eyes as he went on. “If fate marked us, I choose you freely; I choose you utterly even if there is no fate.”
“Is there fate?” I asked as he rose. It was a foolish question, but I was unsettled in a way I had never felt before, vulnerable and raw.
“If there was such a thing as fate, I would have already forced it at a knife’s point to marry you to me.” His lips curled up at the edges.
“For the sake of your plots.”
His mouth broadened into a smile. “For the sake of my plots, yes. But perhaps I am plotting to adore you until the end of our days.”
“Don’t be dreadful,” I said, and he laughed. “Do we need to…consummate? I wouldn’t mind.”
“I wouldn’t mind terribly, either,” he agreed. “We don’tneedto now. Nothing happens until you speak your half of the vows.”
He always sounded as if he were mocking me, but his eyes were gentle as he looked down at me, and he brushed my hair from my neck.
I was the one to stretch up onto my tiptoes, wrapping one arm around his shoulders, and drag his mouth down to mine.
Fear’s lips was soft and warm and tender. I ran my hand through his hair, fitting my body to his as if we were made to be one.
