“What the HELL was that?” she screamed, sitting bolt upright. “Why were you yelling at me? You idiot!”
I’d never seen her so furious. She looked as if she was about to rip out my eyes. “I’m sorry!” I pleaded, “I just wanted you to listen to me for a moment!”
“Why? What the hell was so damn important that you had to knock me off a tower and almost kill me?” she screeched. I got the impression that she wouldn’t want me to mention the fact that she was massively exaggerating.
“Because I was TRYING to propose!”
She fell silent.
Finally.
“I want to marry you, Ruby. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I’m in love with you. Completely and utterly in love with you.”
I pushed into the pocket of my robe, pulling out the small gold band that my mother had worn till the day she died. It wasn’t much, and it hardly seemed the most fitting engagement ring for an emperor to give his future wife, but it was all I had.
“I don’t want an answer now,” I emphasized. “Honestly, I want you to think about this, because if you say yes—that’s it. I’ll never let you go. Take your time.”
“Oh, Ash,” she sighed, her face lighting up as she reached for my hand. “Even though I’m the biggest pain in the ass?”
“Even though you’re the biggest pain in the ass,” I confirmed.
I kept the bird circling the castle, finally finding a way that we could spend time together, uninterrupted and in complete privacy. The strange twilight caused by the ripped sky glared behind Ruby’s head, making her blonde hair look like some kind of angelic halo, her skin glowing in warm, golden tones as she leaned toward me. I clasped her tightly in my arms, kissing the life out of her—her lips electric, sending volts of desire charging through my body.
“I love you, Ash,” she breathed against me. “I love you so damn much.”
Ruby
After the vulture had landed, Ash had left me to meet with the ministers and discuss the schedule for maintaining the barrier. I had wandered through the castle on a pink cloud, completely oblivious to what was going on around me. Jenney had enquired after the boys, but I couldn’t remember what she’d actually said, or what I’d replied. It was like my feet weren’t even touching the ground.
I had always laughed at Hazel’s obsession with romance stories—those implausible endings, falling madly in love within a matter of days, reality vanishing in the force of the characters’ feelings for one another. I had thought it was the stuff of fluffy fairytales. I had never for a moment believed that I would ever feel the same way—as swept up by my feelings, as utterly and hopelessly in love with someone who apparently felt the same way.
But marriage?
It felt so sudden.
I quietly shut the door to our room, resting my head on the back of the door and closed my eyes against the strange twilight that bathed the room in pink and purple light. It was peaceful here. I needed to be alone right now, to sort through the conflicting voices in my head. The rational half of me, sounding a lot like my father’s voice, told me that it was crazy—it was too soon, too hurried. We had insurmountable differences that needed to be discussed before we moved forward together. The other part of me, the emotional part—the sum of my beating heart, the lightness of my body, the shaft of sunlight inside me that felt like it would burst out at any moment—that part of me wanted to rush back into Ash’s arms and give him the answer he wanted to hear.
What do I do?
Which voice was I supposed to listen to?
The rational side of me had always served me well, had always steered me on the right path. It was the reason I’d survived Nevertide, and why I hoped to make an effective member of GASP one day. I always weighed pros and cons, never taking something at face value, knowing the difference between right and wrong—never allowing room for the gray areas of doubt that so many others suffered from.
But this was different.
Wasn’t this the stuff that made life worth living? The unexpected bits, the part where there weren’t lists to be made, where there was no right or wrong. There was listening to my heart, and following it to the end just because I could. It was risky, and messy, and there was the danger that my heart could be broken into a million little pieces, the cracks never healing in quite the same way.
It meant change, and in this instance, a fundamental transformation.
A sentry.
An emperor’s wife.
Nevertide.
Would he come home with me? And even if he did, would he forever yearn to come back here—and what would he do? He’d wanted to be emperor; he had chosen this. If I was the reason that he left it all behind, would he resent me forever? And what about if it was the other way around? What if I lived here, would I eventually hate him for taking me away from my home, my friends, my family?