The ancient, ancient simple words spilled out into the hushed, listening silence, and Honor Alexander-Harrington reached out, as well. She touched Hamish’s mind-glow as he stood close beside her and Emily’s mind-glow, where her life support chair sat at the end of the front pew on the bride’s side of the cathedral. She reached out further, touching her mother and feeling the happiness within her. Touching her father, and tasting the pain still burning at his core…and the healing sifting down to it, as it sifted down to her own, borne upon those ageless, joyous words. The entire cathedral was filled to the bursting point not simply with human bodies, but with human minds, and thoughts, and hopes, and joy. It pressed in upon her from every side, soaking into her like the sea, but this was a sea of light, of energy—of focus and purpose and promise. It flowed into her like the sun itself, and tears starred her vision as she found herself wishing desperately that everyone else in that cathedral could have tasted and known what she tasted and knew in that moment.

* * *

“I’ve been to some remarkable weddings in my time,” Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou said, “but this one…”

He waved his champagne glass at the glittering crowd thronging the grounds of Mount Royal Palace. Security was tight, and treecats were much in evidence. Many of them rode on shoulders threaded throughout that crowd, and others—dozens of others—perched cheerfully on the branches of landscaped trees, on ornamental gazebos and roofs. They could be heard every now and then, even through the steady surf of human voices and the music of the live orchestra, bleeking to one another as they enjoyed the human mind-glows swirling about them like rich, heady wine. But there was a perpetually poised, ready watchfulness even in the midst of their delight, and armed air cars and sting ships loitered overhead while the personnel of half a dozen star nations’ security watched the ’cats like miners watching canaries in some ancient coal mine.

No one at the reception could possibly tune out that omnipresent security, yet most of the guests had become accustomed to their guardians’ presence. There might be new wrinkles to the threats those guardians were deployed to counter, but there would always be threats and no one was prepared to let that awareness dampen this day.

Honor had finally managed to slip away to steal a few moments with her uncle and her family. She’d given her matron of honor’s speech, and with the assistance of scores of personnel from Dame Arethea’s office, she’d made sure the thousands of wedding gifts Rivka and Roger had received had all been properly stored and labeled. Rivka had announced her intention of sending personal thank you notes for every single one of them, and Honor felt sure the redoubtable young woman would do exactly that…however long it took.