“A— You—” I blink at him. “Is this—”

“A ring,” he says simply. “In case you couldn’t tell.”

My unheart clamps down on itself, making it nigh impossible to breathe. “Luc—”

“When this is over, you’ll think about it, won’t you?” He smiles. “We were supposed to, anyway, before all this happened.”

“Supposed to what? Marry?” I squeak out.

His smirk widens. “What I mean is, you were a Spring Bride. And I did, technically and forever, choose you.”

I gape. “You realize that—”

“I realize everything,” he assures me, smirk softening. “And I realize, mostly, that I want to realize you. Every day. For as long as you’ll have me. I don’t intend on transferring the old Cavanosian notions of what a wife should or shouldn’t do to the new realm I’ll build. Not that I think you’d ever ascribe to those in the first place.”

His onyx eyes glitter mischievously, terribly and beautifully, and my blood sings choruses with him in it.

“Will you marry me, Zera Y’shennria?”

I can practically feel my bagged heart in his coat pocket rear up, bucking against its seams. Together. Together for as long as we’ll have each other. Never in a thousand years did I think someone would ask me this—that I would be important enough to someone, to their life and their own heart, for them to consider me their partner. Happiness like that—being important to someone I love, and crave—was never possible in Nightsinger’s woods. It was a dreamy fantasy I read about in my witch’s books, tucked away between the garden rhubarb and spring onions, dirt smears on my knees and on the pages, but I was so lost in the fantasy I didn’t care. What would it be like, I thought, to be asked such a monumental question, and by someone I loved? What even was love? I didn’t know.

But now, in this canyon pulled wide by time and disaster, coated with shadow and mosslight, I do. The world turned upside down, in just a few years that felt more like ages.

I’ll never really be gone. Still. Still, a shred of sadness tears at me.

But I have to hold on to any light I can.

I smile for what feels like the very first time and slide it on my finger.

“I’ll perhaps consider it.”

“Just perhaps?” He quirks a brow above his smirk.

“Just perhaps,” I assert playfully, pretending haughtiness until the very last second, when he pulls me in by my waist, quick and sharp, while his kiss is slow and velvet.