Malphas hung up.
Marcus found the storefront two doors down from Wicked Brews. It had been a bookshop once, and it still smelled like it — old Penguin paperbacks and something vaguely like cat litter. The display window faced the street. The door had a brass mail slot that stuck. The interior was small, empty, and in need of paint.
He signed the lease. Started organising immediately.
The desk arrived first, mahogany, vintage, big enough to spread case files across. Then the bookshelves, floor to ceiling, which he filled with legal texts in alphabetical order. Then the filing cabinets, the lamp, the pen holder. Each item placed with the geometric precision that was as much a part of him as the demon fire under his skin.
He was arranging the bookshelf’s second tier when Hazel appeared in the doorway with a paper bag and a look of amused exasperation.
“You’ve been in here for six hours.”
“The commercial codes go before the criminal precedents. Obviously.”
“Obviously.” She set the bag on his desk. “I’ve been stress-baking. There are three loaves of bread, a pie, and something Azrael refuses to identify. You need to eat.”
He looked at the bag. Looked at his half-organised bookshelf. Looked at Hazel, standing in the doorway of his office with flour on her cheek and her hair coming out of its braid and the silver-and-obsidian pendant resting against her collarbone where it always rested now.
She noticed the silence. Her eyes moved from his face to the desk, where a small velvet box sat beside the pen holder.
She went still.
“How long has that been there?” she asked.
“Since this morning.”
“You put a ring on your desk and then organised bookshelves for six hours?”
“I was working up to it.” He came around the desk. His hands, she noticed, weren’t shaking. His voice was steady. The obsidian scars on his chest were hidden beneath a pressed shirt and a loosened tie, but she knew they were there, would always be there, permanent marks of everything they’d survived. “I had a speech prepared. It was very good. Legally sound. Well-structured.”
“You rehearsed a proposal?”
“I’ve rehearsed it fourteen times.” He picked up the box. “But every version sounds like a closing argument, and I don’t want to argue you into marrying me. I want to ask.”
He opened the box.
The ring was silver and obsidian, twined together like two metals that had learned to coexist. The same materials as the pendant around her neck. The silver that repelled nightmares. The obsidian that absorbed them. Together: a protection against the dark that only worked because both halves were present.
“I’m not good at this,” he said. “At feelings. At vulnerability. You know that.”
She remembered him saying those exact words in the cabin, on the night they’d sat at a kitchen table and admitted that whatever existed between them was bigger than either of them had planned for.
“You’re doing fine,” she said. The same words she’d said then.
“This ring was made by a silversmith in Portland who usually does work for the firm. I gave him the specifications. He thought I was ordering a ward anchor.” Marcus held the ring between his thumb and forefinger. “It’s silver from the same mine that produced your pendant. Obsidian from the same quarry as the blades that nearly killed us both. I wanted it to be those materials specifically. Because they kept us alive. Because they’re what we’re made of, the protection and the thing it protects against, together.”
“Marcus.”
“You don’t have to answer now. Or today. Or this month. I know it’s fast. I know we’ve only?—”
“Yes.”
He stopped. “I hadn’t finished the?—”
“Yes.” She took the ring from his hand and slid it onto her own finger. It fit as if it had been made for her, which it had. “Yes, you impossible, meticulous, alphabetically-organised demon. Yes.”
He blinked.
“I had three more paragraphs,” he said.
