“I missed you,” he says.
“That’s what you remembered you needed to do?”
He smiles. “Yes.”
“I just left your house an hour ago,” I say wryly.
“And?’ he says, “Your point is?”
“No point,” I smile, “I missed you, too.”
He laughs. “I promise I’ll go now.” He starts to leave and then he turns back and dips me dramatically and kisses me one more time and we both laugh. As he walks away again, he pauses at the door and turns back one last time and traces a path around me with his eyes before he blinks once, slowly.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Taking a picture of you in my mind.”
I smile, heart swelling in my chest. “Why?”
“Because you’re beautiful,” he says, almost in a whisper, his voice a mixture of wonder and tender sincerity, “and I want to remember this moment. For eternity.”
My eyes get misty again. “I love you,” I say softly.
“I love you, too,” he says. “I’ll see you at five.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I drive my mom’s car along the gravel road to where Alexander and I always park near the ranger station in the back of Redwood Park. His car is already here. Then I text Alexander to let him know I arrived and I start along the winding footpath that will take me to our fairy ring in the forest. I know it’s a state park but I consider it “ours” anyway because of our initials in the remains of the redwood tree in the center.
I changed into jeans (with expansion fabric that my mom sewed in for me in the front) and a cute, sky-blue empire waist top that ties in the back. Within less than a minute Alexander meets me on the path and I can’t help but stare, nearly dazed, at the sight of him standing tall, dark and knee-weakening-ly handsome before me.
He’s wearing a slate gray suit and crisp white dress shirt with a rich blue tie. The suit traces his athletic frame to perfection and the dark gray color offsets his deep green eyes. The way he’s standing, with one hand casually in his pants pocket, makes him look like a model posed in a catalogue. He rakes the fingers of his other hand through his thick, dark hair a little self-consciously. “You like it?” he asks.
I can barely speak. “I think you’re the most handsome man in the world,” I say when I gather my voice.
He smiles. “Since I saw you in your dress I thought it was only fair that you should see me in my suit.”
“I like the cobalt tie,” I say.
“I like your descriptive names for colors,” he says, and I laugh.
“The tie was inspired by your aura,” he adds. “But I’m sure you guessed that.”
I nod, smiling, and sigh. “You know, other than the fact that we both have dark angels hellbent on killing us, I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.”
He laughs. “Always the optimist.”
I trace my eyes over him from head to toe, taking him in once more. “You really are devastatingly handsome,” I say.
“I’m glad you think so,” he says with a rakish smile. “I’d let you take advantage of me on this path right now but the sun’s going down soon and we still need to rehearse.”
I laugh and he sweeps me up in his arms and carries me effortlessly along the path to our destination. When we get close, he covers my eyes. “Don’t turn around yet,” he says as he sets me down in front of him, facing away from the fairy ring. He rolls his shoulders and straightens his shirt cuffs the way he always does, like James Bond after a skirmish, and I smile and swear to God he’s so handsome I think I may faint. “Okay,” he says, “now you can turn around.”
I turn around slowly and when I see the ring of towering redwoods my hand flutters to my heart. Alexander has decorated it with blue and white lights wrapped in the trees the same way he did when we first kissed and he asked me to marry him. Only now, white folding chairs are set up on either side of a middle aisle, marked by a long stretch of white fabric and leading to a beautiful rustic arch perched over our initials. Strings of blue and white Forget-Me-Nots are entwined throughout the woven wood branches of the arch. It’s gorgeous and magical and I don’t have words for how utterly perfect it is.
I meet Alexander’s eyes. “I love it,” I whisper, my heart swollen in my chest.
“Third time’s a charm,” he says with a smile. “These lights worked for us so well, twice before, that I figured they were lucky.”
“I thought you weren’t superstitious,” I say.
He smiles. “I also know you like them.” He slides his fingers into mine and leads me over to the arch. “I thought you could walk down this admittedly very short aisle and we could stand here,” he says, “on our initials, when we take our vows.”
“That sounds perfect.”
“Should we rehearse?” he asks.
“Sure. Do we have a lot to rehearse?”
He laughs. “Not really, I think we’ve gone over everything. It’s just me and you, and Edwin performing the ceremony, and family and friends watching. I’ll have the champagne and sparkling water here on ice with the champagne glasses.”
“And you have the music ready?”
“Vivaldi’s Spring.”
“And the playlist we put together for after the ceremony?”
He nods. “Complete with At Last for our first dance.”
I smile. “I have good memories dancing with you to that song,” I say, remembering our first kiss.
“Me, too,” he says softly. “I also added Powerful to our playlist, by the way.”
“You did?” I smile.
He nods. “I listened to it so many times during those weeks when you wouldn’t see me, I’m surprised I don’t despise it. But I’ve come to think of it as our song. One of them, anyway.”
I meet his eyes and smile. “I honestly didn’t think it was possible, but the thought of you sitting and listening to that song over and over and thinking of us just made me love you even more.”
He laughs. “I shouldn’t have told you.”
“No, I love that song,” I say. “And I think of us whenever I hear it, too. I love that you told me.” I lean over and kiss him sweetly and he smiles.
“What should we do to rehearse?” I ask, “Should we go over our vows?”
“I thought we’d save them to surprise each other tomorrow. But we could practice with the rings now and do a little ad lib.”
“Ad lib?” I laugh, “This isn’t much of a rehearsal.”
He smiles with a glint in his eyes. “Maybe it was just a pretext to get you out here alone.”
I push his arm. “I love that we’ll basically be winging it tomorrow,” I say with a grin. “But tonight can be like our own private wedding ceremony.”
He smiles and reaches into his pocket and pulls out my platinum wedding band. “I know we wanted to keep it simple but I added something to your band.”
Intrigued, I lift it out of his hand and hold it up to look closer and when I see the engraving on the inside, tears spring to my eyes. In a simple, yet elegant script along the inside of the band he engraved A.R. loves D.J. Always.
I look up and meet his eyes and wrap my arms around him and kiss him. “I can’t believe you did this,” I whisper.
“You don’t like it?” he asks.
I shake my head as I lean over to my purse I set down on one of the chairs and pull out his platinum wedding band and hand it to him. He holds it up and when he notices the engraving on the inside of the band, he meets my eyes. “You did the same thing?”
I nod. Along the inside of his band I had the jeweler engrave D.J. loves A.R. Always.
He smiles and kisses me. “More proof that we were made for each other.” He takes the ring from my hand and gazes into my eyes as he slips it onto my finger. “I, Alexander Ronin, take you, Declan Jane, as my wife, to have and to hold, to love and adore, for endless time and eons beyond. You are the tomato soup to my jaffle and you make my soul sing.”
I laugh. “T
he tomato soup to your jaffle?”
“My two favorite things that go better together. They enhance each other, like we do,” he says with a smile. “And you’ve stated, many times, that jaffle is your favorite word.”
I laugh again and smile back, holding his gaze, and slip his ring on his finger. “I, Declan Jane, take you, Alexander Ronin, as my husband, to have and to hold, to love and adore, to laugh with and talk with and just enjoy being with, for eternity and beyond. You are the strawberry jelly to my peanut butter and you make my soul sing, too.”
He laughs. “I’m jam?”
“My favorite kind,” I smile.
We stare into the depths of one another’s eyes and continue to smile and then he caresses my cheek as he smooths away a stray lock of hair, and we kiss, under our wedding arch, as the sun’s rays line up in the sky, just so, and shine a beam of light upon us.
“So we can leave this all here?” I ask as we’re getting ready to leave the fairy ring. We’ve been talking and kissing for so long that the sun is low in the sky now and the wind is kicking up.
“Believe it or not, I actually pursued official permission this time,” he says. “No one’s ever asked to be married here before, apparently. It’s too far up in the forest I guess, so it took some sorting, but they agreed in the end after I signed a load of legal forms and paid the required fees along with a hefty deposit. They even included the ranger cart to tote everyone up and back.”
I smile. “Even angels have to pay deposits.”
“But we always get them back,” he says, and I laugh.
“I can’t believe that tomorrow at this time we’ll be married,” I say.
He smiles. “Do you want us to spend tonight apart? The night before our wedding?”
“Is that what you want?”
“Honestly? No.”
I laugh. “That wasn’t what I was expecting from the King of Planning and Anticipation.”
“Believe me there’ll be plenty of plans in our future,” he says. “Plans that involve a tremendous amount of anticipation. But right now I’m feeling like I want to savor every minute I have with you. If you’d rather we spend the night apart, though, I understand.”
I shake my head. “I want to sleep next to you. Tonight and every night.”
He kisses me and I melt into his arms again, enjoying the sensation of feeling his lips on mine and just basking in the feeling of being together. When we draw back, his eyes stray to something over my shoulder and his expression changes. I look behind me but don’t see anything.
“It’s starting to get dark,” he says. “We should go.”
“Can you fly us back?” I ask. The idea of flying right now as light energy with Alexander would be the perfect ending to the time we just spent together. He surprises me, however, by declining.
“I’ll carry you,” he says. “It’ll be a fast walk. I want to preserve my energy for tomorrow.”
When we reach the small gravel lot near the ranger station Alexander gives me a kiss and opens the door for me to get into my mom’s car. “I’ll meet you back at your house in a tick.”
“You’re not leaving now?”
“I have something left to do back at the ring. I’ll be along later.”
I look over at his car parked next to mine. “Okay,” I say. “Don’t take too long.”
He nods. “Watch for me,” he says. Then, as I start to drive away he puts his hand on my car to stop me.
“What is it?” I ask, worried.
He leans down through the open window and clutches my face in his hands and kisses me, hard, surprising me. The kiss goes on and on, and I sense the fervency behind it and I entwine my fingers in his hair and kiss him back, just as ardently, and it’s as if we’re drowning together in the intensity of feeling between us. When he finally draws back, leaving me breathless, he gazes into my eyes. “I love you,” he breathes. “Watch for me.”
I nod but as I turn the car around and drive down the gravel road and onto the highway toward home, something in his words, “Watch for me,” leaves me uneasy. It’s an odd turn of phrase, and as I roll it over and over in my mind a knot begins to form in the pit of my stomach.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Alexander
I walk back to the fairy ring and go over and over in my mind, as I have a thousand times, all the different ways this can play out. I thought, hoped, I had loads of time to be with Declan—eternity, really. But I’ve been around long enough to know that hopes and dreams are never guaranteed and this may not resolve with the fairytale ending I wanted.
When I arrive, he steps out from the trees where I spotted him earlier when he was watching me with Declan.
“Alexander,” he says matter-of-factly.
“Malentus.”
We stare at each other in silence for a long while. I noticed a limp when he strode into the clearing and now, as he stands tall, I can see that he’s favoring his left side. I embrace a measure of satisfaction at the idea that these injuries are residual from the beating I gave him the last time we met, but I know better than that. The wounds I was able to inflict on Malentus surely healed a long time ago. I wish I could say the same about the damage he inflicted on me. Instinctively, I touch my side where the scar is.
“I was hoping this could wait until after the wedding,” I say.
“If wishes were horses,” Malentus says with an air of fatalism that I always knew was coming. “I allowed the guardians surrounding you to believe that they were strong enough to hold me back, but I was only waiting for the proper time to intercede. They put up a good fight, though—tougher than expected. Unfortunately for you and Declan, however, it wasn’t good enough.”
“Intercede for who? Avestan?”
“The important point for you to understand,” he says, “is that the deal we strike here today will be honored by Avestan. I’m the only one who can keep him in line, in fact. I’m sure you know how disobedient and impulsive children can be.” He frames the words with an air of dismissive annoyance.
“Impulsive? You mean my brother? Who you turned against me?”
“Surely you know I can only make a man blossom into what was already inside.”
“I’m not making any deals with you.”
He sighs heavily. “If you only knew how many times I’ve heard those words. It’s interesting the deals people make—even guardians—when they have no choice.”
“There’s always a choice.”
“Let’s assume that’s true. I’ll give you nearly the same choice I gave Declan’s father all those years ago: I’ll make you a mortal—so you can live a wretched mortal’s life with your little sprite girlfriend—all you have to do is give me your power and my grandchild.”
“We both know it’s not your grandchild,” I say.
“Let’s not pretend we know anything for certain. It comes down to a matter of trading the baby in exchange for Declan’s life. What I do with the child is no concern of yours.”
“What you do with my child is no concern of mine? You can’t possibly think I would make any sort of deal with you.”
“Let me be clearer,” he says forcefully. “Option B is that everyone dies. Is that a better solution? Or would you rather save Declan? I’m offering the opportunity for you to live a mortal life with her. Isn’t that what she always wanted? For you to grow old together? To live a normal life? Now’s your chance to give her what she truly wants. What she deserves, really. Think about it, Alexander. This overture I’m making is more than generous. Avestan won’t like it, but I’m the only one who can ensure he stands by it.”
“The way you stood by it with Declan’s father? You killed him anyway and you used his best friend as the weapon.”
“Mortals are weak,” he says with a shrug. “And when you find the right ones they’re astonishingly predictable. It took some time, but her father’s law partner turned out to have quite flexible morals. Multiple nudges, sustained over time, was all it took. You could almos
t say it wasn’t my fault.”
It disgusts me to listen to him talk about the murder of Declan’s father as if it were a parlor game. “There’s only one deal I’ll make,” I say. “You and Avestan, and Alenna if she’s with you, leave San Mar now, and leave Declan and the baby alone. Forever. For that, I won’t destroy you.”
“Is that a joke?” Malentus asks mockingly. “You’re forgetting, Alexander, that you have no leverage.”
“My leverage is that you’re wounded. I saw you limp out from the trees and you’re clearly favoring your left side. You may have made it past our guardians, but you said yourself it was far more difficult than you envisioned, and now you’re at a disadvantage. You’re weakened, Malentus. And vulnerable.”
His eyes narrow. “I’ll remind you that I’m an ancient. I’m faster than you and I’m vastly stronger and more powerful. I know you felt that, acutely, the last time we met. Yet you foolishly chose to skirmish with me anyway and you paid the price. How does that long, jagged scar on your side feel every morning when you wake up? Is it tight on your skin? Do you feel how deep it goes? I could suffer a thousand more wounds like the ones I received today and I’d still be able to destroy you without taking a full breath. You have no leverage, Alexander, trust me.”
“What’s that old saying about protesting too much?”
“You’re bluffing,” Malentus says.
“Try me. You know what I can do, and I’m not going down without a fight.”
“This is your last chance, Alexander.” His voice is flat and menacing. “My offer still stands for exactly thirty seconds only: you, living a mortal life with your precious sprite, in exchange for your energy and the child.”
I hold his gaze, silent, as the seconds tick by.
“So be it,” Malentus says, heaving an onerous sigh. “Everyone dies.”
I brace myself as he sends a bolt of black light aimed at my chest. I manage to dodge it and instead of predictably throwing my energy from the distance between us, I rush him instead, kneeing him hard in the groin and punching him so forcefully I can feel his orbital ridge crumble under my fist. If I have any hope of beating him I have to fight hard and fight dirty. He can heal the surface wounds, I know, but they still cause pain and they may provide the distraction I need to strike him with my energy before he can block me.
Revelation (The Guardian Series Book 3) Page 13
