Amelia swayed. Thomas caught her before she could fall, sweeping her up into his arms as if she weighed no more than the breath he had nearly lost.
The solar was the solar again. Whole stone. Banked fire. Sun coming through the windows. A table strewn with parchment. A sword lying quiet upon its cloth, the sapphire now simply a stone.
Hob stood against the door, white-faced, axe hanging loose at his side.
Friar Huck’s cheeks were wet.
Thomas held Amelia against him, one hand buried in her hair, the other locked around her waist.
“Amelia.”
Her lashes fluttered.
“Amelia, look at me.”
She opened her eyes.
For one heartbeat, he was still in that terrible blue light. Still losing her. Still reaching across seven hundred years with nothing but his hands and his will.
Then she smiled.
“It worked. I’m still here.”
The breath left him in a sound too broken to be called a laugh.
He set her carefully on her feet, though he did not release her. Could not. His hands framed her face, thumbs brushing away tears and rain and whatever remained of the storm.
“You stayed.”
“I stayed.”
“For me.”
“For you. For Ashcombe. For all of it.” Her laugh trembled. “But mostly for you.”
Something in him broke then. Not the hard, ruined places. Those had already cracked open around her months ago. This was the last iron hinge of fear, giving way.
Thomas bowed his head and kissed her.
Not the careful kiss of the mill, not a stolen breath tucked into the corner of propriety and danger. This was a kiss with the storm still burning through it, a kiss full of everything he had not known how to say and everything she had crossed centuries to hear. His mouth took hers with a rough, aching tenderness,fierce enough to make her knees weaken and gentle enough to make her heart split clean open.
Amelia rose into him, fingers knotting in his tunic, holding on as if the world might try to take her again and she meant to leave claw marks on time itself before she let go.
Thomas made a low sound against her mouth, half prayer, half surrender.
His arms closed around her, one at her back, one in her hair, and he kissed her as if he could seal every door between them, as if he could answer every goodbye she had just spoken with one breathless yes.
Huck prayed softly, Hob muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “about bloody time.”
Thomas lifted his head just enough to look at her.
“Marry me.”
She blinked.
Hob made a strangled sound. Huck pressed a hand over his mouth.
Amelia looked around the solar. Her hair had escaped every pin and braid, tumbling down her back to her waist in wild red curls. Blood marked one knuckle. She had just closed the door on seven hundred years, said farewell to her mother, and chosen a medieval baron with terrible communication skills.
