My breath caught. It always did when it came to this woman. But now—fates, now—I wanted to fall to my knees.
The dress clung to her like a secret, all opalescent shimmer and luminous shadow. It moved with her, reflecting the faint starlight leaking through the high windows. Her hair was a wild halo around her face, curling down her back like sunlit silk.
And still, somehow, she looked unfinished. Not in any way that diminished her beauty, but in the way that whispered mine to complete.
She didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. Her eyes held too much. Fear. Hope. Fierce, unshakable love.
I stepped toward her and lifted my hands.
Let me?
She nodded once, a smile teasing across her lips before she smoothed them.
I turned to the window and threw it wide with a flick of my finger. A rush of cool mountain air burst inside.
Outside, the true world, my world of magic, was waking slowly. Mist pooling in the forest hollows. Stars still lingeringabove the peaks. The castle gardens stories below sparkled with dew.
I pulled from them all.
A low wind stirred in answer to my call, sweeping upward toward us. It carried petals and leaves and slender threads of sikeen. I caught them with my magic, suspending them in the space between us like a thousand tiny stars.
Shifting my hands through the air, I guided the elements into place, twisting vines no thicker than embroidery thread into filigree chains, shaping them around beads created from the dew. A necklace took form, white and iridescent, clasped with a hook made of a bit of bleached fessalile wood.
I settled it gently around her throat.
“Still mine,” I whispered, stepping toward her. “Every breath you take.”
“Just as you're mine.” Her voice caught. “Body, heart, and soul.”
“Forever,” I breathed against her skin.
That sparkle in her deep brown eyes… I would die a happy man as long as that was the last thing I saw.
I eased around behind her.
The air obeyed my command, lifting her curls. I wove them into the braid I'd once crowned her with. Regal and wild all at once.
I laced the braid with frost-silvered thisala, starblight jewels that could only be found in one particular river high in the mountains, plus threads I wove from morning mist, holding it all in place with the barest hum of power.
I spun a veil from moon-thread and sikeen, letting it drift to her shoulders. It shimmered in the moonlight.
“Still the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen,” I said roughly, leaning forward to kiss where her neck met her shoulder.
Her skin quivered, and she turned to face me, her eyes full of the world.
“If I never get another day with you,” she said softly. “This one will be enough.”
It wouldn’t. Not for me. Not for her. Never for us.
Two days until the curse closed its jaws, and I crumbled under the weight of fates’ inevitability.
Unless we broke the curse.
But I didn’t speak of that. Didn’t need to. I could see the same worry in her eyes.
I reached for her hand and kissed it, then dropped to one knee.
Her breath hitched. Her fingers trembled in mine.
