He took a seat beside her on the bench, and covered her free hand with his own. “One thing only, my own lady,” he said, quietly, his voice barely audible over the music. “Is it your pleasure that we make our choice known tonight, or would you—”

“Tonight!” she said quickly. “If we wait, if I go first to the Council—there will be objections, however trivial, and the Councilors will want to argue it over for days and days! But if we simply tell them, at the unmasking, they will accept what they must.”

“You are as wise as you are beautiful,” he said warmly, patting her hand. “I would not have thought of that. And—how fitting, for any who might recognize my costume if we are standing together at the unmasking—”

“Or better still,” she said, suddenly seeing it all in her mind’s eye, “—on the terrace!”

His eyes sparkled behind his mask. “Oh, well thought! How soon before midnight strikes?”

That, she could answer, for there was a time-candle visible from where they sat. She pointed, and they could both see that there would be just enough time for them to slip into the Palace and get into place before the trumpeter marked the moment of unmasking.

Giggling with a giddy exhilaration, she now led him in through an unguarded door in the public part of the Palace, then back through the maze of corridors to the terrace door where she had so lately stood. There was no one there now, not even a page, and the doors stood open. Together, hand in hand, they walked out onto the terrace at the exact moment that the trumpeter sounded the call of midnight.

With a cheer, the masks came off—all but theirs. With an instinct for the drama of it, they both waited until the rest of the guests noticed that there was a couple standing alone on the brightly lit terrace where the Masque had taken place—

—that one of the figures was a Moon Maiden—

—began to grasp that the other must be Prince Karathanelan—

And at that moment, he pulled off his mask and flung it behind himself, as she pulled chaplet, veil, mask, and coif all off, shaking her hair loose so that it fell down around her shoulders. And as the guests saw that it was her, he again pulled her to him, and bent down in their first public embrace and kiss.

She closed her eyes, as her ears filled with the great cheer that went up as her arms went around him.

And she thought, in that moment, that there could be no happier person in all of Valdemar than she.

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