"You're right," she croaked. "This is something we've been weighing on me. I even have the special crying pillow just for the occasion."
Titters from the crowd, through the tears. She never looked away from his eyes.
"At first I felt stupid for not realizing what things would look like for us. Then I just panicked. Because how are we supposed to cram a whole lifetime into such a tiny amount of years? So yes, I did rush us a bit to get here. I wanted to get this part over, because in my head I thought once this was over we could actually start living our lives and making memories. I thought getting to this part was what I would want to remember. But thegetting herewith you was the best part of all of it. Even when I wanted to strangle you."
She was able to feel the rumble of his laughter through their clasped hands as she smiled up through the tears that never stopped falling. From somewhere behind her, Lurielle could hear her mother’s voice. She heard Khash's sister’s voice. And then she heard her grandmother’s voice, cutting through the din.
“Oh, Volinda, will you justshutup? For once in your life?!
Khash’s shoulders shook, but his laughter stayed silent. Despina had attended, saying it was worth crossing the patient/therapist line, just to celebrate how far she’d come.And now she can see what I mean.Lurielle wasn’t going to turn, wasn’t going to acknowledge the outburst. If her mother was being carried away by the brawny minotaur who’d been sitting on a golf cart texting just out of the way, she didn’t care. She didn’t want to know.He called him Kev. Worth marrying just for that. And the fucking. All she saw was him.
"My binding promise to you is that we're never going to stop laughing. We're never going to stop making memories through the mundane.”
She swallowed down one of those laughs one that was brewing with a sob on its heels.
“I got caught up in the idea of those big milestone moments, but those big milestone moments are only a handful of things. Our life together happens in between, in the small moments. And that's what I want to remember. Every single day, until I'm back in your arms. No matter how long it takes."
When their hands were bound in an intricate braid, Lurielle took a deep breath, waiting for the cuff. Instead, his brother Kesst produced a ring. A long, delicate purple gemstone on a shining band, wrapped in a ribbon of gold, bearing tiny pink stones.
"But the cuff," she whispered, for his ears only.
"You're an elf, Lurielle. Our children will be part Elvish. They need to know where they come from. And you don't need to change yourself for me."
He slid the ring onto her index finger, grasping her free hand in his own before he bent and pressed his lips to hers, the familiar indent of his big tusks pressing into the apples of her cheeks. She shrieked when he scooped her up lighter than a doll.
“Darlin’ my granddaddy is watchin’ us right now. He didn’t come all the way from his ancestor's table just to watch you give me a lil’ peck like a rabbit.”
Her breath caught when he swallowed her lips, his tongue sliding against hers in a way that made her toes curl in anticipation of that night. Overhead, a pop, a hiss, and an explosion. Fireworks, she realized. One more thing Grace had taken care of.
"Well, how about that, Bluebell,” Khash whispered into her hair, catching her lips again. “They're playing our song."
Silva
The picturesque little street was like something out of one of her daydreams.
Every tenth house featured a towering oak between the street and the sidewalk, while tulip magnolias and ornamental cherry trees dotted the space before the other homes. Each yard was immaculately landscaped, and the landscaping itself mirrored the century home in front of which it stood. They varied in age and style, all of them built sometime in the 19th century. Tate would love one of the perfect, doll-like homes. He could fill it with his antiques and she would make it comfortable and cozy, a marriage of everything they liked together.
The house she was staking out was one of those darling Victorian styles, with cascading gables and gingerbread trim, and a magnificent, turreted tower. Three full floors, a huge, sloped roof with a peak at the center, a stained-glass window in the gable. Leaded windows glittered all around the main floor, and even though the shape of it was compact from the sidewalk, Silva could tell the house was huge and deep.
Hollyhocks and sweet peas filled the garden, purple and blue hydrangeas, fuchsia azaleas, and the late-spring remains of multicolored rhododendron, climbing up the corner, beyond the wraparound porch. It was lovely. It was quaint, and quirky, and old-fashioned.
It was the precise sort of house a witch should live in, Silva thought.
She lifted her fork to her lips, the Styrofoam take out container balanced against her steering wheel. Bright red, slightly briny to her palate, her eyes fluttered closed. There was only one restaurant in Cambric Creek that served a steak tartare to her liking, and she had been ordering it several times a week, gobbling it down in stolen moments, hiding in her car like a criminal. She had worried for a moment that her parents might question the sudden uptick of charges on her credit card for that particular bistro, but she would simply say she was ordering lunch to take to work, which she shared with Tannar. If she went more than a few days without the bloody meat, she would be unable to sleep, a hunger clawing at her throat, twisting her insides, that no amount of vegetables or tofu could satiate.
She had been attempting to work up her nerve for this particular task for more than a week, but now the clock had run out. It was time to act or show her cards, keep up the hustle, or lay down her cue and walk away from the table.
Her mother was going to be devastated. Her grandmother was going to be heartbroken. Both of those things were going to hurt her, but she was already hurting.What's a little more?If she had to be miserable, Silva had decided, if she was going to be forced to be Silva of the Daytime indefinitely, the whole world ought to be miserable with her.Misery loves company and company loves more.
Unfortunately,thiswas a necessary component to her plan. She couldn't pull anything off if it would all fall apart on her; ifshe would be sent packing, back to her family in disgrace. She had panicked and twisted and fretted, and then finally realized. The witch at the market.
Silva already knew of her skill. She had purchased virtually one of everything off the woman's table in a series of successive Saturdays, stretched over the last year. After Ris had explained to her the futility of buying over-the-counter remedies at the local pharmacy — something she had been to silly and naïve to not realize, so ensconced in Elvish society she had spent the first twenty-six years of her life — Silva had turned to more arcane methods of medicine in the past few weeks. The witch sold herbal packs, steamers and salves and powders, for toothaches, fevers, headaches, menstrual pain, and every ailment in between. Remedies for head ache and nausea, obliging her to chew bits of root and bark like an animal, brewing strange-smelling teas, putting a powder in her drinks that gave everything a mud-like consistency — but they'd worked.
She had dropped the bottle of human formulated painkillers in the trash, turning instead to her stock from Brackenbridge Spellcraft, and hadn't looked back.
The woman's business card posted more than just lotion and shampoo.Holistic healthcare and Spellcraft, available upon appointment.
She hadn't made an appointment. There was little time for that. Instead, she had staked out the witch's house. It was easy enough to do. She and Tate had seen her walking hand-in-hand with a huge Araneaen, last year when Tate had stayed with her, the night of that party in Bridgeton. As it turned out, there weren't many Araneaens in town. Finding her had been uncomplicated.
