Page 63 of An Empress of Earth & Darkness

She tucked a stray hair behind her ear, and he followed it with his ocean eyes. “Then we take them with us. Think about it, with more men, we can cover more ground. It can be a secret mission for the Blacksteel Clan, the first that you will command to demonstrate the kind of moves you will be making as a commander.” She reached out to touch his arm. “It also confirms your authority. It’s a power play, and a respectable one.” She let him think on that for a second. “It is in the clan’s best interests just as much as it is in ours to seek out the stones. More and more humans are finding out about the Dark Army, and what is protecting them from the shadows? Nothing. Yet the Minister of Coin can only think about greed and gold instead of the protection of his faction. It is only a matter of time before the Dark Army uses humans to find the stones too, granting them immortality. You saw what he did with Taymir, and he was a member of a powerful elite family. If Balan can convert the magic community to become darkened, then think what a human with nothing to lose would do for immortality.” She sat back a little, and Torin looked like he didn’t want the distance to come between them. “We know they have the Immortality Stone, let’s not give them any more power than they already have. Let’s be the ones to protect the kingdom and secure the keys to the cage of the underworlds.”

Torin sat in silence once more, likely pondering over what she had just said. “Let me think it over. I will speak with Gideon and Artem and see what they think of it. I will seek out my first counsel, since I will need to appoint my second-in-command soon.”

She nodded. “Should it not be Gideon? Is it not his birthright?”

“Actually, it would be my son’s birthright.” He looked over at her, and she felt her throat thicken. “It is only Gideon’s name until the Gods grant me a son. And as commander, I need to write a decree that announces who it is until I have a successor. But even then, clans have fought over less.” His lip pulled at the corner.

Emara snorted. “I think you hunters just make excuses to fight.”

Torin chuckled. “It’s how our world works. It’s competitive.”

She rolled her eyes. “I hope there isn’t a queue of people lining up outside your door this very minute to be your second-in-command. How would you choose?”

He rested back into his chair with a cocky smile on his face, and he looked like an oil painting in one of the Minister of Coin’s rooms, powerful and strong. “Whoever it is must be as good-looking as me and able to swing a sword just as easily. But I guess it’s not fair to set such high standards.”

“You are honestly the most arrogant asshole I have ever met.” She lightly hit his leg with her hand, and before she knew it, she was laughing as Torin Blacksteel caught her hand and pulled her in.

His eyes narrowed. “Are you insinuating that someone is more handsome than me? Because if you are, I am going to have to kill him.” He tickled her side, and her laugh and scream could have been heard around the Tower, but she didn’t care. It was a welcome reprieve.

He paused and ran a hand over the back of her head, sending shivers of her body. Torin looked into her eyes and said, “See, it’s not only your flaming candles that light up the room. It’s your laugh too.” He tilted his head to the side, displaying the angles of his face. “Maybe this room won’t be filled with endless misery after all.”

A long silence waded in on them as they looked at one another, not willing to look at anything else in the world. It was just them and the light of a flame, the unseen magic that burned between them the magic of a thousand universes. “Marry me,” he uttered, and Emara’s heart stopped. “Marry me here. Marry me now. Marry me tomorrow. Marry me anytime you want.” He took her hand in his. “But just be mine forever.”

Unable to stop the hand moving to her heart to clutch anything she could touch, Emara sucked in a breath. Shock must have taken hold of her tongue. She was sure she wasn’t speaking, or maybe her heart was not beating. Or maybe she had imagined the whole thing.

But Torin spoke again. “I was going to ask you at a different time, at some stupid ball or at some monotonous formal event, where everyone in the kingdom could have talked about how I got down on one knee and asked for the hand of the Empress of Air. But I cannot believe in my heart that it would be more perfect than asking you here, now…especially when you are smiling at me like that.” He slid her off his knee for the second time, and as he stood her upright, her legs shook, almost leaving her body to drop to the floor. But he held on to her hips as he moved from the chair and onto one knee.

Torin removed a small box from the breast of his leather tunic and clutched it in his hand. “For years, I was terrified of this little box, more terrified than I was of anything that moved between the shadows or that could have been discovered in the lakes of the underworld. I have been terrified to give this box to anyone but you.” He opened it to reveal a stunning gold ring holding a black diamond in the shape of a teardrop. Emara’s breath faltered again as he spoke. “I tried giving this to you at winter solstice as a second present—not to rush you or make you feel that I was igniting pressure for a formal treaty, but as a promise that I was all in with you. As a promise that there would be no one else but you.” His eyes glittered with darkness, and Emara’s lungs squeezed in her chest, starved of air. “It was a symbol that I didn’t want to search for anyone else to be by my side.” Tears began flowing from her eyes, and Emara found her stomach contracting as she forced herself not to cry. “But we were interrupted and I gave this ring to Magin to give to you should anything ever happen to me. After you were taken, I couldn’t believe how foolish I had been, and I promised myself that I would be the one to give it to you. And now that the Gods have willed me to live another battle, I still want you to have it. It was my mother’s, and I know she would be honoured to see you wear it. But there is one more thing I need to show you before you answer.”

One more thing.

Was he trying to kill her?

She tried gasping for air, but her element was just as shocked as she was. It was failing her, stunned into silence.

“Open the bottom of the box.” He pressed his full lips together as he placed it in her hands.

There was a small compartment that slid open as Emara pulled it open with trembling fingers.

In the candlelight, it looked like a strange powder, and Emara looked down at Torin, still kneeling before her, not understanding.

“It’s ash,” he said.

“Ash?”

He nodded. “The ashes of your treaty to the Blacksteels.”

Emara’s heart punched against her ribs, not knowing whether to stop altogether or to burst.

“So if you choose to marry me, you would be marrying me because you want to and not for a treaty or an alliance, but because you choose me and I choose you. Just like I said last night, meeting you has set me free from so many boundaries, and I will do everything I can to ensure the same freedom for you.” He took hold of her hand again. “So, will you do me the honour, Emara Clearwater, and marry me?”

The announcement of Torin Blacksteel challenging his father for commandership had made its way through Huntswood, and more and more people were turning up at the Tower. Gossip and whispers always did seem to end up all over the city faster than the feathers of a plucked chicken in a winter wind. But as the midnight chime came from the grandfather clock, Breighly Baxgroll noticed that Emara had still not returned from the commander’s office where she had disappeared hours ago.

Breighly had been standing since dawn, unwilling to leave Emara’s side, and her feet were burning in her new boots, rubbing in ways she’d thought only fashionable shoes did. Her back was aching, her legs were stiff, and she was kind of pissed that she was missing all the food that had been cooked in Torin’s honour.

Her stomach betrayed her and let out an awful grumble.

It was a great start to being a guard of one of the most powerful witches in the kingdom, an honour that her body should fucking acknowledge instead of fighting against. How ungrateful did her human form need to be?

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