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“You don’t have to solve every problem this moment. But do you understand now that if we have any hope of defeating her, then I must do everything I can to protect you?”
“Yes.” I did see. It wasn’t romantic, but the reasons were good ones. More, I believed he’d told me the truth. “But I feel like I’m marrying you for your health insurance or something.”
His hands flexed on my waist, then slid up and down my back. “Make it clear for me. Are you saying you promise to marry me?”
I sat back a little. The rare times in my princess-obsessed youth that I’d nursed fantasies of this moment, I’d never imagined a proposal like this. Rogue, with his wild magic, feral sexuality and the black-thorned pattern ranging over his face and body, now running with rivulets of blood, would never fit anyone’s definition of Prince Charming. Absurdly a line from Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)” went through my head—a song I’d always considered irritating, if not downright anti-feminist. And yet some deep programming in me wanted to know where my diamond was.
“Do you laugh at me?” Rogue’s voice came out edged, his eyes glittering into dangerous.
“No. Sorry.” I rolled my eyes at myself. “A silly thought, leftover from apparently far too many Zales commercials.”
“What does that mean?”
“It doesn’t matter—really.”
“Gwynn.” He used that demanding tone that never failed to make me shiver. Speaking of anti-feminist. “Tell me.”
“A dumb thing—in my world you’d give me a diamond ring when you asked. Which is hardly relevant because it’s supposed to represent a financial sacrifice and you could just magic one up. Besides, it’s antiquated and really kind of sexist because it stems from the need to display wealth to prove you can support a bride. Which is also not relevant in this situation, because—”
“Gwynn,” he said again, interrupting my babbling, but gently this time. “Are you nervous?”
Oh shit, I was. My heart fluttered and I gazed into his so familiar but terribly alien face. What the hell was I getting myself into? And why did it seem to matter so much?
“Maybe,” I admitted. “I mean, this is kind of huge. Like, the whole rest of my life huge.”
“Did you have other plans?”
Once upon a time, I could have said yes. Before my life took a hard left turn into crazy.
“Wait.” I grasped at the straw. “You still haven’t told me the tenth reason.”
“Yes, I have.”
“No—the last one was the all-humans-must-die ninth one.”
“Please don’t say that outside this chamber.”
“I won’t. Only to you. You have to trust me.”
“I do, my Gwynn.” Rogue ran his hands up my back, coaxing me to lean into him, his mouth hovering just under mine. “The tenth reason is that I care for you, more than anything else. I love you—you taught me how to think and feel in a different way—and I want you with me always. You are the partner and lover I never knew to dream of—only enough to wish for. Tell me you’ll be that.”
I melted. See? He could have skipped right to number ten, suckering me in with the romance, after all. I probably should find out what all the rules were for being married before I committed, but…what the hell. We could always negotiate later.
“Then yes.” I said the words I’d never seriously thought I would. “Yes, I will marry you, Lord Rogue.”
I’d expected one of his fierce and possessive kisses, some of the victorious triumph he’d showed on other occasions when I finally capitulated to whatever he’d been maneuvering me into. Though—and maybe I was kidding myself—this didn’t feel like a defeat. As if he knew it, too, he kissed me on the cheekbone, butterfly light, almost reverent. He kissed my other cheek, then the center of my forehead. It felt ritualistic and I trembled with each brush of his lips, deeply touched. Drawing back, he waited, solemn.
So I followed suit, kissing him first on the patterned side of his face, then the other, then the center of his forehead, the spot the Hindus called the third eye.
“It is agreed?” Rogue asked, more of the ritual.
“It is agreed,” I echoed.
Something shifted between us, like a cord tightening, the strength of the vow like a magical binding that rippled through me. For a blazing instant, I felt it in him, too, as if I saw through his eyes, felt the slow turn of the Black Dog deep in his soul, the answering slice of the cat’s gliding acknowledgment. If agreeing to this marriage unified us so profoundly, I wondered what the final ceremony would do.
Not that a ceremony of devotion had helped Fergus and Blackbird—in fact, quite the opposite. Memory holes had led to secrets that forced them apart.
“They are not sorcerers.” Rogue spoke against my cheek, hearing my thought though. “It is different among us. Or so I’ve heard. Such matches are rarely made.”
