Just the fountain, the lights in the trees, and Aleksei standing near the terrace steps with our son on his hip.
Ari sees me first and starts bouncing.
“Papa!” he says, then points at me. “Mama!”
“Yes,” I say slowly. “That is generally how family works.”
Aleksei actually looks nervous. That gets my full attention immediately. He sets Ari down.
Our son wobbles toward me with the confidence of a very short drunk king, holding something in both hands. A small box.
My whole body stills. No. No way.
He reaches me, nearly trips, recovers, and thrusts the box at my knees. “Mama.”
I crouch slowly. “What is this?”
He whispers, very loudly, “Papa says ask.”
I look up.
Aleksei is standing there with his hands in his pockets and that look on his face. The one he gets when he’s more exposed than he wants to be and forcing himself to stay still anyway.
I open the box. The ring. Not the first one.
This one is different. Simpler. Beautiful, but not heavy with history. Chosen, not inherited.
That detail hits me harder than it should.
I look back up at him.
He steps closer, then stops in front of us. “I thought,” he says, “it would be better to ask when neither of us was sleep-deprived, poisoned, bleeding, or holding a newborn.”
“That does narrow the field.”
Ari nods solemnly like he agrees.
Aleksei glances down at him, then back at me. “He insisted on helping.”
“Did he?”
“No,” he says. “I insisted. He liked the box.”
That makes me laugh, which is probably good because otherwise I might cry too early and ruin the pacing.
He takes a breath. “Zatanna.”
There is no audience. No performance. Just us, and the little boy now trying to pry the ring box back out of my hand.
“I was not wrong the first time,” he says. “I was early.”
“I love you,” he says. “I love this life with you. I love our son. I love that you fight me when I deserve it and sometimes when I don’t. I love that you stayed by my side after every reason not to.” His voice is steady now. “Marry me.”
Ari, sensing his cue in the worst possible way, yells, “Marry!”
I laugh through the tears already starting.
Aleksei looks briefly betrayed. “That was not the line.”
