The lights were off.
That was weird. Someone was always home—usually multiple someones.
"Hello?" she called out, and for one sharp second her brain offered a cold little what if—what if something had happened, what if—
The lights flipped on.
"SURPRISE!"
April jumped, hand flying to her chest, and then she saw them.
All eight of them. Standing in the living room wearing—"Are those jester costumes?" she asked faintly.
"Fool costumes," Liam corrected, adjusting his ridiculous hat with bells that actually jingled. "There's a difference."
"We're your Court of Fools," Jax said, grinning beneath a green-and-gold motley. "It's thematically appropriate."
The costumes should have looked ridiculous—and they did—but her brain was also noticing other things. The way Jax's motley clung to his shoulders. How Liam's stupid hat with bells somehow made his jaw look sharper. The fact that even in a jester costume, Killian still moved like he owned every room he entered.
Don Dante was in a black suit—of course he was—but someone had pinned a single jester bell to his lapel like a threat and a joke. He caught her looking, lifted his coffee in a minimal salute, and said, "I'm participating."
Killian took her coat, his fingers gently brushing her shoulders as he slipped it off.
The room was decorated. Banners that said LONG LIVE THE QUEEN and HAPPY FOOLS DAY hung from the ceiling. There was a literal throne set up near the windows: velvet, gilded, completely absurd. Their Jenga tower sat on the side table, blocks stacked in careful chaos. Evidence of a game that had turned into something permanent.
And on the table, arranged on silver platters, were dozens of cupcakes. April walked closer, warmth spreading in her chest. They weren't just any cupcakes. They were Madagascar vanilla professionally made, each one decorated with delicate gold leaf.
"Mateo made them," Killian said, watching her face. "He's been planning this for months."
April picked one up, feeling ridiculously, impossibly happy. The kind of happy that made her fingertips tingle and her throat tight in the good way, like her body didn't quite know how to contain this much joy.
A year ago, she'd walked three blocks in the rain and paid twelve dollars for a cupcake that said #1 Boyfriend and tasted like lies.
Now she had Madagascar vanilla cupcakes made by a man who took flour personally, and eight men in fool costumes looking at her like she was the reason the sun came up.
"You're all insane," she whispered.
"Correct," Jax said immediately.
Arthur's mouth twitched, almost a smile, and that was basically a standing ovation.
Then they were pulling her toward the throne, settling a crown on her head, crooked on purpose, and she was laughing and crying at the same time while eight grown men in jester costumes knelt dramatically before her like they'd rehearsed and also like they absolutely had not.
"To the Queen," Caleb said, raising a glass of champagne.
"To the Queen!" they echoed.
The party that followed was chaos—good chaos.
Mateo kept feeding her bites of cake, his fingers lingering at her lips a half-second longer than necessary, making exaggerated chef noises about "calibrating her palate" while his thumb brushed the corner of her mouth. She felt every point of contact: his fingers, his thumb, the way he was looking at her like she was the most important thing he'd ever calibrated.
Jax had rigged the sound system to play a fanfare every time she moved, which became annoying instantly, and he refused to acknowledge that as valid feedback. She gave him a look, and he leaned in close, his hand brushing her face as he murmured against her ear, "My love is as a fever, longing still," before dancing away, leaving heat pooling low in her stomach, her skin prickling with awareness.
Caleb performed a dramatic reading of their contract, in full Shakespearean actor voice, while Dante looked simultaneously proud and deeply, personally offended by the interpretation. April's hand found Caleb's, squeezing once.
Jiro and Liam got into a dance-off that somehow involved the jester bells.
Arthur kept adjusting her crown every time it slipped, moving to her side without a word, his hands careful in her hair, fingers lingering at the nape of her neck a half-second longer than necessary, like he was memorizing the shape of her. Then Jiro would appear, adjust it the opposite way with his fingers brushing her jaw. Arthur's steadiness on one side, Jiro's teasing on the other, and she was exactly where she belonged, the space between them that was hers.
