“You can’t marry me!”
She shrugged a little. “Only because you haven’t asked.”
“What are you talking about?”
“At Ordnung, we discussed this. I said then I wouldn’t marry anyone but you and you said that you hadn’t asked me.” Now she looked away, blinking rapidly.
I felt as if I’d been kicked by a horse: stunned, momentarily dizzy. We hadn’t discussed it. She’d been in a strategy meeting with her sisters and I’d only attended because Ami insisted. At least that way I could keep an eye on her. “That wasn’t about us.” I felt my way through the words. “You were just saying that, to support Her Majesty, and I returned the joke in kind.”
“No,” she replied with exaggerated patience. “I said that because I want you to be my husband. Then I waited for you to ask me, like you seemed to want to. And then you never did. You wouldn’t even dance with me—not at the coronation ball, not at Castle Avonlidgh.”
“Ami…” I felt wrecked. So much I’d done wrong. “I wouldn’t dance with you because I can’t dance.”
Her mouth fell open slightly. “Oh, Ash… This is your answer?”
“And I can’t ask you to marry me,” I continued doggedly. “You’re a queen and I’m an ex-convict.”
“Is that the only reason?”
“It’s a pretty fucking big reason.”
She glared, no longer so watery. “If I’m queen, I make the law. I can marry who I like.”
“You’re still subject to the High Queen’s law.”
“You think Essla wouldn’t back me on this? Harlan is her consort and maybe there are good political reasons for him to stay that way, but she won’t marry anyone else, either. I’ll get her to make you into a duke or something, if that’s what you need.”
I shook my head, trying to clear it. “The Duchess of Lianore offered to dub me Lord Sousbois.”
Ami smiled. “It’s a pretty place. You’d like it.”
“It’s not so easy as that.”
“It is that easy, Ash.” She framed my face with her hands. “Just let me love you. Let yourself love me and everything else will fall into place.”
“Love doesn’t solve everything.”
“No.” She kissed me. “But it makes everything worthwhile.”
I sank into her, into the kiss and into the silken sweetness of her embrace. In the soft light of morning, I let myself love her as she’d asked, showing her with caresses and all the rawness in me, how very worthwhile that could be.
16
We gathered, the four of us, to exchange gifts in the last of the light of that day. Astar and Stella, of course, had been going mad with anticipation for theirs. And they wouldn’t last through the vigil until midnight. Ami declared that tradition could wait on them growing up more, and for now we’d share opening presents as a family, in the late hours of afternoon of the shortest day of the year.
That worked fine for me, though it shortened my preparation time. Next year, I’d be ready. Next year at Windroven. Since I knew where I’d be, for the first time since I escaped that prison.
And for the first time, I realized that maybe part of me had never escaped, and it was past time to let him out. I’d found continuity, my own home, in Ami and at Windroven. I could be safe here. And it was time to embrace the new, letting the past fall away.
Astar loved the sword I’d carved for him. It would do until I could get him a better one. Because my parents had always given me intangible gifts instead of material things they couldn’t afford, I also gave Astar a scroll, explaining that it was the gift of sword lessons.
Ami gave both Astar and Stella pretty toys, and—to my surprise—she also gave promises—scrolls tied with ribbons. This one her love. This one hugs for the asking. More to call in favors of games to play or a willing ear to listen to their troubles.
I’d cut up my White Monk’s robes, to make a cape for Stella. A cloak of invisibility, I told her, so she could wrap up in it, be quiet, and not have to feel what everyone else felt. With it I gave her a scroll promising lessons in that too, and in healing. She accepted it gravely, stretching up to kiss my cheek, while Astar whooped around the room, swinging the wooden sword in wild circles.
Making those had left me little time, so I gave Ami the scroll I’d made for her with an apology.
“Why apologize?” she asked. “The kids like toys to play with, but Moranu is the goddess of the intangible. It’s traditional to give the gift of a promise, or something else that isn’t a material item.”
I gazed back at her, bemused. “I thought my parents only did that because they were poor.”
She leaned in and kissed me. “Maybe sometime you can tell me stories about them. Anything you feel you can, I want to hear.”
“About that—this is one of those stories,” I told her, handing over the scroll. It had been terrible to write out, leaving a pall of illness behind. Just the pus, oozing out. Curiously, after I finished, I felt lighter, as if the act of telling the story had cleansed that infection. I’d made two copies: one for her, and one to burn at midnight.
Ami clutched it so tightly she dented the scroll, her eyes full of emotion. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“There’s more. It might take time to tell you all of it, but I want you to know. So here is this gift.” I unrolled it and showed her. I written one word on it. Trust. And she smiled to see it.
“One more.” I glanced wryly at the kids, Stella now the lion cub batting at the thrusts of Astar’s practice sword. “Not exactly a romantic setting, but…” I went down on one knee.
“Oh, Ash.”
I had to calm the frantic battering of my heart, speaking slowly to get the words past the scarring. “Amelia, my love, my sun in the best of all possible ways. Will you be my wife?”
“Yes.” She caught her breath on a sob. “Yes. We’ll have a big wedding.”
“I don’t care about the formalities. I’m already yours, if you’ll have me.”
I stood to kiss her, but she reached for the remaining scroll she’d brought, holding it against her breasts with a sly smile.
“Oh, I’ll have you, all right, but we’re going to do it right, for all the world to see. And this is a start.” She handed it to me and rang a bell.
I laughed as I read it—then resigned myself as the quartet of musicians came in and set up. Ami held out her hands and I took them.
“Put one hand here, and the other here,” she instructed. “Listen for the music. One, two, three. One, two, three.”