Page 39 of Blood Feast

“Nothing.” She blew out an exasperated breath. “I’m making an attempt to surprise you, if you must know. Please humor me.”

He tucked his mind magic away, a smile coming to his face. If his Grace wanted to give him a gift, he certainly wouldn’t dishonor it by ruining the surprise.

She bit her lip. “I hoped to do this differently…under better circumstances…but I suppose we’ve never aimed for perfection, have we?”

He brushed his thumb across her freckled cheek. “You know how I feel about perfection. It’s that thing you rescued me from.”

She broke one black bloom off the roses growing in the doorway. “Would you step us to the top of the Observatory tower?”

“Hypatia’s Observatory? What can you have in mind?”

“No peeking into my thoughts,” she reminded him, hugging her dog against her. “Please bring Knight, too.”

He cast a glance back at the gathering, but Mak and Lyros had disappeared. His mother had entered and was talking with Kalos about the room she had prepared for him. She and Aunt Lyta made shooing motions, while Uncle Argyros sipped his coffee with an implacable veil over his thoughts.

Rudhira, on his way out the door, gave Lio a sly look and tossed him a plain wooden box. “Don’t open it yet.”

Lio caught the container and held it across his palms. He couldn’t begin to guess at its veiled contents. “Is our entire family in on this?”

“Anyone who isn’t soon will be,” she said cryptically.

“You’re wearing your kingdom-destroying look.” He pulled her closer. “I know better than to resist.”

Lio stepped them to Observatory and was astonished to find they had it to themselves, even though it was usually crowded with Hypatia’s colleagues and students. They surely had Kia to thank for this privacy.

No polar wind cut across the flat, open top of the tower. Mak and Lyros’s wards enclosed the entire deck, protecting the soft flames of countless candles that Xandra must have arranged on the stone floor. Music began to drift up from somewhere below.

“It’s our dance,” he said. “The very first song we ever danced to back in Tenebra.”

A smile finally relieved Cassia’s expression, and she nodded. She murmured a command to Knight.

He trotted over to a purple basket filled with rimelace. That had to be Zoe’s contribution. The hound picked up one of the delicate white flowers in his mighty jaws, reminding Lio of the night he and Cassia had smuggled the medicinal plants to Zoe and the other sick children. That had been when the canine member of Cassia’s family had first granted Lio his approval.

Cassia set Rudhira’s box down among the candles and took Lio’s hand. “Come here.”

She drew him to the very edge of the Observatory deck, and they stood without fear on the brink, where no railing separated them from the stunning view below. The city of Selas was spread out at their feet. Every stone their people had laid down over the last sixteen hundred years. Every fragile pane of glass they had spun into this unbreakable Sanctuary. Everything they were fighting for.

Cassia drew a deep breath, nervousness skittering through her aura. “This is where we were standing when you asked me tostay with you in Orthros forever. Where you offered me eternal night and spun dreams of the future we could have.”

“How well I remember. This is where you admitted you wanted to stay.”

She swallowed. “And then refused you. That’s why I want to do this here.”

He brushed her hair back from her face. “Do what, my rose?”

Her heart beat faster, making his own flutter in his chest. She turned the black rose in her hand. “That night, you offered me the white rose of Sanctuary. But you’ve always accepted my black roses, Lio. My thorns and my chaos and the long, difficult path it took for us to stand here, living the future we dreamed of all those moons ago.”

He traced a finger along her lip and touched the tip of her fang. “It was worth it.”

She blinked hard. “I promise you all of that is over. I want to prove to you here, now, that we won.” She reached up and touched his neck. “You will not lose me. You cannot lose me. That’s not possible anymore.”

“Forgive me my fears, Cassia.”

“No more fear, Lio. We are one. And it is time to say it.” She held out the black rose, her aura aching, as if she held her heart in the palm of her hand. “Lio, will you avow me and profess before our people that our Grace bond is true?”

All his words and thoughts and expectations deserted him. He stood, stunned, his hand wrapping around hers and that flower.

“I know we don’t have much time before we leave Orthros,” she said in the voice that had rearranged the world for him so many times before. “I know we’re at war. But that’s why I am asking you now, my love. I want to call you Grace before every Hesperine. I want to wear your braid for all to see. And when we go errant, I want you to have our avowal oath to reassure you that no matter what the world throws at us, I am wholly yours.”

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