It didn’t work.
Every step down Brindlecross’s lane seemed to knock another thought loose. The ring at his throat felt heavier than it had that morning. His palm kept drifting up to check it was still there, thumb brushing the simple Lyon crest through the fabric.
You’re going to give her a prince’s ring in a town square, he thought. In front of half the people who’ve only just stopped calling you “mysterious guard.” Sensible.
Lanterns were already going up as the sun slid lower, kids running past him with paper shades shaped like birds and stars. Someone had strung colored glass between two houses; it caught the light and threw little patches of red and blue across the dusty road. Smoke from food stalls drifted in—meat, sugar, fried dough. Laughter carried with it, bright and unselfconscious.
It all felt too… open. No courtyard walls. No convenient pillars to hide behind if his courage failed at exactly the wrong moment.
He thought of Kairi’s hand in his, the way she’d curled it there and tugged him toward her brother and Tessa like she was done pretending not to choose. Thought of the way her eyes had gone wide and soft when he’d said her name as Dato and she hadn’t stepped back.
Tomorrow he’d stop pretending for everyone else. Today, they were the only two who knew—almost. Kairi, Rush, Tessa. And by the end of the night, if he didn’t make a complete fool of himself, she’d have a ring.
He wasn’t sure which part scared him more: the giving, or the fact that he wanted it that badly.
The bakery came into view, shutters open, light spilling warm onto the street. A handful of people sat on the bench outside with festival bread; most of the crowd had already flowed toward the square. Mena was waiting by the door. She straightened when she saw him, smoothing invisible crumbs from her skirt. “There you are,” she said, relief loosening her shoulders. “I was starting to think Raelin had been right and you’d run away"
He huffed. “I have a job here” he said. “Where exactly would I run?”
“Center of town, apparently,” Mena said. “They went ahead. Raelin wanted food before dancing. I told them I’d wait and make sure you didn’t get lost.”
“Very noble of you,” he said gravely. “Saving guards from wandering into the wrong festival.”
She laughed, a quick, real sound, and fell into step beside him as they turned toward the square.
Brindlecross was different tonight. Banners had been strung between buildings, faded but carefully mended. Lanterns bobbed overhead, some bought, some obviously homemade, their colors uneven but bright. Kids darted past with sticky hands and mouths stained from some kind of berry glaze. A fiddler tuned up near the fountain; a drummer thumped a heartbeat under the murmur of voices.
Dato let himself look, let himself map this version of the town, the one Kairi loved enough to be afraid of leaving. It made something in his chest twist.
“So,” Mena said, hands clasped behind her back as they walked. “Is the capital really as big as everyone says?”
“Yes,” he said. “And no.”
“That’s a very helpful answer,” she noted dryly.
He smiled, small. “The stone part is big,” he said. “Walls, courts, markets. But most people live in one or two streets, really. A handful of shops. The same three corners they walk every day. Those parts feel… smaller. Easier to breathe in.”
She glanced up at him, considering that. “Do you think she’ll like it?”
He didn’t have to ask who she meant.
“I think she’ll like some of it,” he said honestly. “The markets. The lake. The little courtyards that don’t care who’s walking through them. I think the rest will be… a lot.” He picked his next words carefully. “I’m hoping to stack the odds in her favor.”
Mena was quiet for a few paces, then: “About that.”
He looked down.
“You said,” she went on, eyes on the lanterns overhead, “if there was a way, you’d try to make it so we could go with her. As her… what was the word? Ladies. Maids. People who stop her tripping over the wrong skirt in front of the wrong person.”
“Ladies in waiting,” he supplied.
“Yes, that,” she said. “Do you still think it’s possible? Or was that just a nice thing to say on a hard day?”
He thought about lying. It would be kinder, now, to set the bar lower if he couldn’t deliver later. But that wasn’t what she’d asked him for in that little workroom. She’d asked not to be surrounded by strangers.
“I think…” he said slowly, “I’m about ninety percent sure I can make it happen. Maybe ninety-two.”
Her head snapped toward him. “Ninety-two?”
“I just need to clear it with my brother,” he added.
Mena blinked. “Your brother,” she repeated. “Is he… very convincing at paperwork?”
Dato’s mouth quirked. “You could say that.”
She laughed. “High-level servant, then?” she guessed. “One of those who actually knows which pen to bully to get anything done?”
He hesitated, then leaned down a fraction, lowering his voice. “Can you keep a secret for about a day?”
She frowned. “A day? Why only a day?”
“Because tomorrow,” he said, “I won’t be Kylar.”
She stopped walking. “What is that supposed to mean?”
He checked the crowd, no one was close enough to overhear, and searched for a path that didn’t feel like stepping off a cliff.
“Let’s say,” he tried, “that you and Raelin read some of my private correspondence with Willow.”
Mena’s brows knit. “We never read any of your letters, Kylar,” she said, a little offended. “Only the princes’. Dato and Damon. The ones she showed us.”
He stopped too, turning to face her properly under a swaying lantern. “Exactly,” he said.
Her confusion held for one heartbeat, two. Then he lifted his hand to his throat, fingers hooking under the collar of his shirt to pull the chain free. The Lyon ring slid into view, catching a line of lamplight. Simple band, old gold, crest worn smooth in places from generations of hands.
Mena’s eyes went wide. “Oh,” she said, very softly.
He pressed a finger to his lips. “Secret,” he reminded her. “Until tomorrow.”
Her gaze flicked from the ring to his face and back again, as if she could force them not to match.
“But—” She swallowed. “You’re—”
“About ninety-two percent sure I can make it happen,” he said, a little wry, letting the ring fall back against his chest. “If you and Raelin still want it. If your families do.”
She just stared for a moment, opening and closing her mouth without words making it out. Lantern light turned her eyes glassy. He reached out and gently caught her wrist, tugging her back into motion before anyone noticed they’d frozen in the middle of the lane.
“Treat me how you treat Willow,” he said lightly, as they started walking again. “I’m the youngest, if you weren’t sure which brother that makes me. It’s not the impressive one with the charm. It’s the one who falls down stairs.”
That startled a breath of a laugh out of her, shaky but real.
“You’re serious,” she said.
“I am,” he said. “About her. About you two. About… all of it.”
She walked in silence for a little while, taking that in. The noise of the square grew louder ahead—music finding a rhythm, voices rising and falling, the bright clatter of festival.
“If Raelin finds out before tomorrow,” Mena said at last, voice steadier now, “she might actually explode.”
“Let’s avoid that,” he said. “I’d prefer her alive if she’s going to bully me about dancing.”
“She will,” Mena said. “Even more now.”
They stepped out into the edge of the square.
The world opened: stalls in a ragged circle, lanterns strung in haphazard lines, the fountain dressed with ribbons like it was trying to be a crown. Couples already spun in a rough approximation of the dance; others hovered at the edges with cups and skewers and paper-wrapped pastries.
Dato’s eyes went searching, almost without permission. Past the fiddler, past the baker’s stall with its trays of festival bread, past a cluster of children chasing each other with flickering lanterns shaped like phoenixes.
Then he saw her.
Kairi stood near one of the food stalls, Raelin at her elbow, Tessa just behind them. Her hair was half-up, pinned with the stubborn little hairpins they’d finally bullied into place, the rest falling in dark waves down her back. Her dress wasn’t anything a palace would call grand, but it fit her like it had been made with her laugh in mind. Lamplight touched her cheekbones, the hollow of her throat, the small, nervous twist of her fingers in her skirt.
As if she felt him looking, her head turned. Her eyes found his across the lantern-lit space, as unerring as if they’d had a thread between them.
Her smile, when it came, was small and bright and entirely for him.
Mena nudged his arm. “Go, then,” she said under her breath. “Before Raelin decides to fetch you by the ear.”
“I’ve faced worse,” he muttered, though his heart was hammering as he stepped into the lantern-glow and the warm press of people, walking toward the girl who knew both his names and was still standing there, waiting.
He slipped to her side like he’d always belonged there. Up close, he could see the faint edge of kohl along her lashes, the dusting of powder Raelin had insisted on, the way her mouth fought between nerves and a smile.
“I see you survived another talk with my brother,” she said, looking up at him, eyes dancing even as she tested the words.
Kylar offered his arm, a little formal, a little not. “I did,” he said. “Evidence: I’m here.”
He leaned closer, voice dropping for her alone. “Only a couple of new threats.”
She huffed, rolling her eyes, but he felt the way her fingers settled more securely on his sleeve.
Behind them, Tessa signed with brisk satisfaction,
Kylar dipped his head to her. “Enjoy your food,” he said, meaning: thank you.
Raelin folded her arms, eyeing him up and down. “You will take turns,” she warned. “I’m not letting him keep you the whole night, Willow.”
Before Kairi could answer, Mena slid in smoothly and hooked an arm through Raelin’s. “How about,” she said, “we let them have one dance first. We can find our own victims after.”
Raelin considered this, then sighed, dramatic. “Fine. But I’m coming for you later, Kylar. I demand a dance.”
“Noted,” he said, almost managing solemn. Kairi felt his arm flex under her hand as Mena steered Raelin away.
When they were out of immediate range, Kairi tilted her face up to his. “Rescued,” she said softly.
He smiled, small and a little crooked. “Only for the moment.” His thumb brushed once, barely, along the back of her hand where it rested on his sleeve. “A spin or two?”
“I would love to,” she said, and found that, for once, the words didn’t trip over other worries on the way out.
He led her toward the circle where the musicians were driving a fast reel, the sort of dance that involved more laughing than grace. He took his place opposite her, hands finding hers with a ease born of a hundred imagined versions of this moment in the meadow.
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The first tune was all steps and clapping and being handed from partner to partner. She traded grips with a man from the fields for one round, with a man who talked with her for another, even with an elderly baker who beamed at her like she’d grown up on his doorstep. Every time the pattern looped back, Kylar’s hands were there again, steady as a marker stone in the current.
“Doing all right?” he asked once, catching her mid-turn.
“Trying not to trip over my own skirts,” she puffed, grinning. “So far it’s a success.”
“You’re doing better than half the guard at autumn balls,” he said, and something in his eyes went warm and faraway, like he was doing some quick, private comparison.
The musicians slid, after a while, into a slower song. The circle loosened into pairs. Kylar’s hand found the small of her back with the kind of care that still surprised her, guiding her a little closer. She let one hand rest on his shoulder, the other still caught lightly in his.
For a second she thought of the last time they’d been this close: not in lamplight but moonlight, not in a festival square but in the meadow’s soft dark, figuring out how to be brave in each other’s arms.
“You look…” He stopped, took a breath, and started again. “You look beautiful.”
Heat climbed her throat into her cheeks before she could stop it. “Thank you,” she said, very aware of where his fingers pressed at the hinge of her shoulder blade.
They traded small, necessary things while they moved: Raelin’s victory over her hair; Tessa’s ruthless opinions about eyebrow plucking; how he’d nearly talked himself out of coming to the bakery door at all.
“Were you nervous?” she asked, half teasing, half serious.
He huffed a laugh. “About this dance?” His gaze held hers for a beat. “Terrified.”
Her answering smile felt like something untying in her chest.
By the time the song ended and a faster, stomping line dance began, they’d drifted back toward the edge of the dancing, breath a little short, faces a little flushed. Mena and Raelin appeared as if summoned, bearing clay cups that smelled of spiced cider.
“Hydrate,” Mena ordered, pressing one into Kylar’s hand before Kairi could protest. “Can’t have you toppling over our girl.”
Kairi snorted. “He survived my brother. He can survive a reel.”
Kylar took a grateful sip. The cup had barely touched his lips before Raelin swooped.
“Thank you,” she said sweetly, plucking it from his hand and passing it to Kairi. “You can finish that later, Willow.”
Then she grabbed Kylar’s wrist with a mercilessly cheerful grip. “Come on, Your Guardliness. You owe me a dance.”
He shot Kairi a helpless, amused look as Raelin towed him away. “Send help,” he mouthed.
She laughed, the sound caught between fond and delighted, and watched him be swallowed by the line of dancers, tall and dark among farmers and millers and town boys in their festival best.
Beside her, Mena exhaled like she’d been holding her breath for the last ten minutes.
“He told me who he was,” Mena said quietly.
Kairi’s head snapped toward her. “He—what?”
Mena winced, but she was smiling too. “That’s exactly what my face did,” she said. “I was waiting for him at the bakery. He walked me here. Talking about the capital and… possibilities.”
Kairi’s heart thudded against her ribs. “What did he say?”
Mena’s eyes softened. “I asked if he thought he could really get us in. Raelin and me. As part of your household.” She nodded toward the dancing where Kylar was currently being spun into a laughing farmer’s wife’s arms. “Said he was about ninety-two percent sure he could make it happen. He just had to clear it with his brother.”
Kairi’s hand tightened around the cup. “Ninety-two?”
“He started at ninety,” Mena said, lips twitching. “Then he thought about it for two streets and the chances went up.”
Kairi barked out a startled laugh that blurred almost at once at the edges. Mena’s expression shifted, catching the shine in her eyes.
“He showed me his ring,” Mena added, dropping her voice. “The one on his necklace. Told me to keep the secret for a day. ‘Because tomorrow I won’t be Kylar,’ he said.” She shrugged. “He knows we read the letters Willow.”
The square seemed to tilt for a moment. Kairi rocked with it, cup clutched to her chest.
Mena watched her for a moment. “He…” The word caught. She tried again. “He’s been thinking about you,” Mena said simply. “About us. About not leaving you alone with strangers.”
Kairi swallowed hard. The future she’d been trying not to picture came rushing in: marble halls and strange doors and correct forks and a hundred new ways to fail. Now, threaded through it, a different image: Mena tutting at her hair in some capital bedchamber; Raelin glaring at some courtier twice her size; Kylar standing in a doorway where he would be waiting for her to walk by his side.
Mena lifted a hand, gentle. “We can talk about it later,” she murmured. “Your eyes are watering. And Raelin will demand to know why.”
Kairi let out an uneven breath and forced the tears back, bit by bit, until the square stopped blurring.
“I’m…” She looked down at the cup, then back at Kylar as Raelin spun him past, his hair mussed and his smile unguarded. “I’m grateful,” she whispered. “That he was preparing. That he’s not just… taking me away. He’s bringing pieces of here with us.”
Mena bumped her shoulder, a quiet, conspiratorial nudge. “It’s almost like he’s thought this through,” she said.
Kairi watched Kylar get spun past again, Raelin laughing as she traded him to yet another partner. Her chest still felt too full, but it was a warmer kind of full now.
“…Dato is a kind, thoughtful man,” she said quietly, half to herself.
Mena’s mouth curved. “All the older single ladies in Naberia are going to be very disappointed when they find out what your brother really is.”
Kairi blinked, then snorted. “Rush has other things he’s interested in besides companionship,” she muttered. “Maps. Supply lines. Glowering at people who stand on the wrong side of a door.”
Mena laughed, bright and delighted. The image of Rush hunched over a table, hair tied back, muttering about grain routes while some hopeful noblewoman fluttered nearby, was ridiculous enough that Kairi had to laugh with her.
They both turned back as Raelin came weaving through the crowd toward them, cheeks flushed, eyes bright. Behind her, Kylar was already being seized by a pair of town girls who clearly had opinions about turn order. And he couldn't fall back on his title to say no. The girls dragged him back into the dance with the courage of not knowing who he was.
Raelin hooked herself onto Kairi’s other side with a satisfied sigh. “He leads really well,” she declared. “And dances better than half the boys here.”
Kairi couldn’t help it; her mind laid tonight’s movements over a hundred twilight practices. Bare feet in meadow grass, his uncertain first steps as she counted out beats and corrected his hands, his slow, careful confidence growing until he could spin her without thinking to these festival dances.
“They have a lot of dances in the capital,” she said, watching him. “I’m sure it’s part of guard training. It’s… kind of like swordplay. You have to know where everyone is, or someone loses a toe.”
Raelin considered this, then nodded solemnly, as if this explained everything.
Kairi lifted Kylar’s abandoned cup a little. “We should rescue him after this one,” she said. “Before he dies of charm and dehydration. He’ll want his drink back.”
As if summoned, Tessa appeared at her elbow with cakes in both hands, expression unimpressed with the entire concept of dancing. She followed Kairi’s gaze to the cup, then to Kylar in the line, then back again.
She took a decisive bite of one cake and simply waited.
The song rattled to an end in a flurry of claps and laughter. Before the next tune could strike up, Tessa moved. She cut cleanly through the loose edges of the line, snagged Kylar’s wrist with her free hand, and towed him out of the crowd with all the efficiency of someone relocating a piece of furniture that she has relocated many times before.
He stumbled, laughing, half-protesting. Tessa shoved the uneaten cake into his palm like a payment for services rendered and steered him the rest of the way to their little cluster.
Kairi stepped forward, holding out his cup. “Welcome back,” she said, smile tugging at her mouth.
He looked at the cake, then at the drink, then at her, a little breathless and a lot happy.
“Best rescue I’ve had all week,” he said, and wrapped his fingers around the cup, knuckles brushing hers, as the music rose again around them.
Mena and Raelin let themselves be lured off by another knot of dancers. That left Kairi with one prince in borrowed finery and a cup that still had most of his drink in it.
She bumped his elbow with hers. “Come on,” she said. “Before you faint dramatically from hunger and ruin my evening.”
He let her tug him toward the food stalls, hand warm around hers, eyes still flicking back to the lanterns and the dancing like he was memorizing it. They traded a few coins for meat skewers and found a low wall off to one side of the square, close enough to the music to feel it, far enough that they could hear each other without shouting.
The square was full in that festival way: kids streaking past with sticky fingers and paper lanterns, someone laughing too loud near a game stall, the smell of spice and sugar and woodsmoke layering over cobblestone and night air. Lanterns swung lazily overhead, washing everything in shifting gold.
Kairi chewed the first bite of her skewer, swallowed, and said, “You look… less likely to bolt than you did an hour ago.”
Kylar snorted. “That’s the meat talking,” he said. “Don’t give me credit I haven’t earned.”
She smiled sideways at him. In the lanternlight, with his hair a little damp from sweat and his sleeves rolled to his forearms, he looked unfairly like every story Mena and Raelin had ever whispered about strangers at festivals. He left 'stranger' behind a long time ago though.
“So,” she said lightly. “How many threats did my brother use while I wasn’t there to glare at him?”
He swallowed his bite before answering. “Fewer than I deserved,” he said. “More than he’ll admit. We’ve agreed to… terms.”
“That sounds ominous,” she said.
“I’m still allowed to dance with you,” he offered. “For now.”
“For now,” she echoed, and rolled her eyes, but her hand brushed his knee as she shifted, a small, absent pressure that didn’t feel accidental. They ate in companionable silence for a few moments, watching a circle of younger kids try to copy the grown-ups’ steps and dissolve into chaos. Kairi leaned her shoulder against his as she pointed out one of the littlest, solemnly dragging his feet exactly on the beat.
“Look,” she said. “Future Shadowguard.”
“Terrifying,” Kylar murmured. “I see promotion potential.”
Her laughter bumped against his arm. He wanted to put his head down on her shoulder for a ridiculous second and just stay there.
Instead, he cleared their skewers away, carried the cups to the wash table, and came back to find her sitting exactly where he’d left her, looking out over the square like she could fold the whole night into a single memory and tuck it into her pocket.
He sat again. For a heartbeat, he just watched her.
The lamplight caught in the strays around her braid, turning the edges to copper. She had a smudge of something near her wrist from earlier, probably ink or salve, and the line between her brows was a little deeper than he wanted it to be.
“We were ridiculous,” he said, because he needed to say something that wasn’t stay like this. “Earlier. All that planning.”
She turned her head. “You mean our very serious strategic discussion of how to appear hopelessly in love?” she asked. “I thought we were brilliant.”
He huffed a laugh. “I was the one suggesting tragic sighs and getting lost in your eyes every time you say the word ‘herb.’”
“You do that already,” she pointed out. “The sighing, not the herbs.”
He made a face; she smiled.
“Do you think we really need all of that?” he asked, more quietly now. “The… extra. The performance.”
She looked back at the dancers, chewing at the inside of her cheek. A gust of wind rattled the lanterns; somewhere, someone whooped at a successful toss.
“Honestly?” she said. “Probably not. You’re very bad at hiding how you feel. In a good way,” she added, when his shoulders tensed. “I think if we just… don’t hold quite as much back, people will see what they want to see. We don’t have to stage a play for them on top of living it.”
“Slow,” he said. “Like we planned.”
“Slow in public,” she corrected. “Fast in here.” She tapped gently over his heart, then her own. “But even then… don’t cut yourself in half for this, Kylar. Don’t be Dato for them and ‘just Kylar’ for me and spend the rest of your life trying to stitch the seam straight.”
His breath snagged. The words landed with the same weight as the ring against his chest.
“What should I be, then?” he asked, half teasing, half something else.
“The boy I’ve been talking to for six years,” she said simply. “The one who shows up even when he’s exhausted. The one who asks if my shoulders hurt before he admits his are worse. Let them see that man. Just… slower.” Her mouth curled. “We can add a tragic sigh or two if Damon looks disappointed.”
He laughed, surprised and low. “You realize,” he said, “if you give me permission not to be polite about this, I’m going to be… very obvious.”
“Good,” she said. “Be obvious. Let them think it’s ‘love at first sight’ if it makes the story cleaner. We know better.”
“We do?” he asked.
She nudged his knee. “We’ve been falling for six years,” she said, very softly. “This is just when we stop pretending it’s not happening.”
Something in his chest went warm and painful at the same time. “What about you?” he asked. “You going to be lovestruck?”
“Absolutely,” she said, with mock gravity. “Scandalously so.”
He arched a brow. “Do I want to know what that looks like?”
Kairi considered, eyes brightening with mischief. “Hmm. I could hover,” she mused. “Stand too close in every room so they have to keep rearranging the chairs. ‘Accidentally’ end up by your side in every doorway. Forget how to let go of your hand for entire council meetings.”
“That last one might interfere with my ability to sign paperwork,” he said.
“Tragic,” she said. “We’ll adapt.”
He snorted. “I can picture Rush’s face already.”
“Rush already knows,” she said. “I’d rather he sees why and accept it"
He quieted at that. The music from the square shifted to a slower tune, something wistful and warm that made the lanterns feel closer.
“Maybe we don’t need to do anything… huge,” he said, more to himself than her. “Maybe it’s enough if they see you laughing at my terrible jokes and me looking at you like this.”
She met his gaze and held it. For a moment, the noise of the festival faded to something far away. He wasn’t sure who leaned in first when their foreheads touched lightly, just for a breath.
“I’m going to do something reckless,” he heard himself say.
Her lashes lifted. “Now?” she asked, half amused, half wary. “What’s more reckless than the past six years?”
He took in the curve of her mouth, the steadiness in her eyes, the lanternlight turning the whole world to gold and shadow around them.
“This,” he said softly. “More reckless than dreams.”
He closed the last of the distance.
The kiss wasn’t like the meadow ones, all twilight and quiet and the hum of magic under their feet. This one tasted like spice, smoke and the faint tang of cider she’d stolen from Raelin’s cup. The noise of the square pressed in around them; somewhere, a child laughed, a fiddle slid into a new melody. His heart slammed against his ribs hard enough he was sure she could feel it.
She did. Her hand found the front of his shirt, fingers curling in the fabric, and she sighed into his mouth like she’d been holding that breath for days. He half closed his eyes. The moment her lashes brushed his cheek, he let muscle memory take over. His hand found the chain at his own throat, the familiar circle of the Lyon ring cool under his fingertips. Carefully, carefully, he lifted it. The kiss gave him excuse enough to lean closer, to raise his arms without drawing her eyes.
He slid the chain up and over his head; for a heartbeat it caught in his hair, then slipped free. He guided it, gentle and slow, over both of them, the fine metal whispering past her temple, her ear, the curve of her jaw. Her eyes stayed closed, trusting. When he let go, the ring fell in a small arc and settled, warm from his skin, against hers.
Kairi broke the kiss on a tiny, surprised breath. Her hand released his shirt and went automatically to her collarbone. Fingers found the chain, followed it down, curled around the weight of the ring.
She looked down at it, then up at him.
Kylar’s stomach dropped like he’d stepped off one of the mountain stairs wrong. All at once, he was acutely aware of what he’d just done: taken the most visible piece of his name and put it on her without asking anyone’s permission but hers.
A Lyon ring on a Tearian princess, in the middle of a town that still thought he was just a guard. His mind helpfully supplied every reason this had been a terrible idea. Too soon. Too much. Too visible if anyone noticed. He could hear Rush’s voice, Ryder’s, Damon’s, Ezra’s, all of them with opinions, and not one of those men was sitting on this wall in front of her.
He was.
His pulse roared in his ears. He made himself stay very still, hands loose on his knees, eyes on her face.
“I—” he started, then stopped. Tried to explained it and that sounded like it cheapened it in his mind. Then he stayed silent and left her alone with the weight.
Kairi turned the ring once between thumb and forefinger, studying the worn metal, the familiar sigil. Lanternlight slid over it, over her knuckles, over the faint tremble he hadn’t meant for her to see.
When she finally spoke, her voice was not teasing. It was soft and clear and entirely sure.
“I think,” she said, “I’ll keep it for a while.”
The knot in his chest loosened by a degree he could feel. She lifted the ring again, considered the way it gleamed, then tucked it carefully under the neckline of her dress until it rested out of sight against her skin.
“The older ladies might riot,” she murmured. “When they find out whose name I’m wearing.”
He huffed out something that might become a laugh. “We can hide it from my family for a few days,” he managed. “Maybe weeks, if we’re very lucky.”
“We’ve done harder things,” she said. “For longer.”
She reached for his hand then, laced her fingers through his, and squeezed.
“Come on,” she said, eyes still bright. “We should go be ‘slow’ in public, before Raelin decides to organize a search party.”
He let her tug him up, his ring warm and hidden against her heart, the echo of her mouth still on his. As they walked back toward the lanterns and the dancing, he decided that if anyone ever asked, he’d say he fell in love with her at the harvest festival in Brindlecross.
He’d keep the truth for himself: He’d been falling for six years.
Tonight was just when he stopped pretending he wasn’t.