“He is?” she asked.
“Of course. He’s my soul mate.” I hadn’t taken his place in the underworld just because he was good in bed.
“And when do you think this will happen?”
“I wanted to start planning the wedding now, actually.”
She stilled when she heard what I said, her fork stabbed into a piece of lettuce. “Now?”
“Something small. I just want to be married.”
Instead of teasing me like she usually did, she looked almost horrified.
“What?”
“I didn’t realize he’d asked you to marry him.”
“Well, he didn’t, technically. But it’s what we both want.”
“How do you know it’s what you both want if he hasn’t asked you?”
“Because I do,” I said. “I don’t need a marriage proposal. I don’t need him to get down on one knee and present me with a ring. It’s hard to explain, but we’re just past that. We want to spend our lives together. We already are spending our lives together.”
My mother finished stabbing her salad before she took her bite.
“When you got married, what did you wear?”
“A dress,” she answered. “And he wore his armor.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. I always wear my armor. But I kinda want to wear something else.”
“You can wear whatever you want, sweetheart.”
“True,” I said. “Maybe we’ll do it in the courtyard. But I’d like the dragons to be there, and we can only fit so many. So maybe the wildlands.”
“Lily.” She rarely said my name, let alone with the tone she used now.
I met her gaze and tensed at what she might say.
“I understand you two know your relationship better than everyone else, but I think it would mean the world to your father if he got to be a part of this.”
“Of course he’ll be a part of it. He’s going to be at the wedding.”
“I mean, I think it would mean a lot to him if Callum asked for his permission.”
My eyes flicked back and forth between hers. “You’re the last person I expected to feel that way.”
“I don’t want to cut open old wounds, but your father has had reservations about Callum. I just think it would make him feel better if his opinion mattered. If the two of them could have a conversation. I think it would bring all of us closer together.”
Our beautiful lunch had turned into a stressful meeting. “I told Dad what Callum meant to me, and when I asked for his help, he turned his back on me?—”
“I know?—”
“I love Dad, and he means the world to me. I harbor no ill feelings about it toward him anymore. But his opinion of Callum has always been factually incorrect. I don’t think Dad is ever going to embrace the man I love as a son—and that’s okay. But I’m going to marry him anyway. Maybe, in time, he’ll come around. But I know beyond a doubt that you two would have married each other even if both of your parents disagreed with the union. So I don’t really understand the point of Callum making that gesture only so Dad can reluctantly agree. It’s just…archaic. You raised me to explore the world and lift my sword in battle. You never pressured me to settle down and get married and be a mom if I didn’t want to be. You told me I could be whatever I wanted to be, to live by my own rules, march to the beat of my own drum. So why are you now asking me to conform to these outdated rules?”
“I’m not asking you to, Lily,” she said calmly. “I’m just telling you that I think it would mean a lot to your father. That’s all.”
“But if Callum asks him, and he says no, then what?” I asked. “We get married anyway? What’s the point?”
