Epilogue #2
The question cracked something open inside Seven, and heat climbed the back of his neck. He did. His Ser Thalos was probably at home in a pair of basketball shorts, pouring over case files. He could picture the faint crease between Enzo’s brows, the glow of his monitor painting half his face.
His chest squeezed; his sudden ache for Enzo made no sense. He would see him in less than two hours. He had seen him just ten minutes before the curtains went up when they’d FaceTimed. Still, his desperate need for him to materialize in that moment was so real his gaze slid to the wings.
He wanted to see broad shoulders there, a sharp jaw, that controlled temper in a three-thousand-dollar suit. The man who hated spectacle but loved him. After all, both things could be true.
“Yes,” he said, his voice small. “Yeah.”
The lights dimmed. The crowd’s roar softened into a hush. It was the kind of silence that had a pulse.
“Then maybe you’d like to finish the scene with him,” the actor suggested.
Music swelled around them, noble and theatric. It was a song Seven had heard through cheap speakers a million times.
A spotlight cut across the wings. For a breath, he let himself be pragmatic. Of course, no one was there. Of course not. Enzo would buy a twenty-thousand-dollar gaming rig and have a desk altered to protect Seven’s wrists. He’d cancel depositions to watch a raid. But he would not step—
Polished steel caught the light. The audience gasped.
Enzo walked out like he owned the stage.
He moved the way he did when a witness was about to crumble—slow, collected, his patience weaponized.
The armor he wore wasn’t foam, but looked real.
The Silver Creed’s crest gleamed on his breastplate.
A sword hung peace-bonded at his hip. He wore it like he’d been born wearing it.
Even the stage lights seemed to bow around him, haloing the edges of his armor in molten gold.
Had they dressed him, or had he had the costume made?
Dressed like this, he was Ser Thalos, the fan-art version made by artists in love, not the showroom model built on deadline by an overworked game developer. A perfect, ridiculous knight.
The crowd screamed. Seven did, too, but silently. Ever’s shriek cut through the top end of human hearing. Seven’s knees went weak. The stage tilted, and the world narrowed to a circle of light and the sound of his own heartbeat.
Enzo stopped a foot away from him, a smirk on his face as he went down on one knee.
Rowan Thorn Vale—Seven—forgot how to breathe. “What are you doing?” he wheezed under his breath.
The helmet shadowed Enzo’s eyes, but Seven could tell by the minute downturn at the corner of his mouth that he was fighting a smile. There was a mic attached to his costume, but when he spoke, it wasn’t Enzo’s closing argument voice. It was a cadence built under an oak older than entire kingdoms.
It was Ser Thalos.
“Rowan Thorn Vale of the Greenwood,” he began, “forged by winter, taught mercy by wolves. You hunted beside me when I was only a selfish blade, and you turned me from the worst of myself more times than the gods kept count.”
Seven’s throat tightened, his eyes stinging as he swallowed audibly.
His pulse tripped over itself, drumming against the underside of his jaw.
These words weren’t new. He’d heard them countless times, just never filtered through Enzo’s voice.
He’d heard them as Rowan Thorn Vale, but never directed at him. Never as Seven.
Nico gasped somewhere beside him. “Oh, my God.”
“I have stood upon walls the moon once claimed,” Enzo went on, every word shamelessly over the top and perfect, “and sworn a hundred oaths that meant nothing because I did not know the shape of the one I needed. Here it is: your hand in mine; your shadow beside mine at dawn; your name in my mouth when the dark is loud.”
A sob rose from the mezzanine, and Seven blinked hard, his vision blurring, the stage lights smearing gold across the edge of his lashes.
“I was not a good man when I first took a blade for a creed,” Enzo continued. “I was a weapon others pointed. You”—his head tipped and he looked up—“made a man out of me.”
The Thalos actor stood near, smiling out at the crowd. “I think we’re missing something.”
He lifted a hand toward the mezzanine, and the lights chased his gesture. The camera followed. The audience turned as one and watched as two processions started down the side stairs, one on the left and one on the right.
As the faces sharpened under the light, recognition hit Seven like a lightning strike. Their families were here. All of them. His mom. Enzo’s Uncle Rocco. No, all of the Contis. Everyone. Jericho and Atticus. The entire Mulvaney clan. All there. All for them.
The air thickened with perfume, cologne, and the faint sweetness of popcorn and disbelief. His chest felt too small for his heart.
What is happening right now?
They came to the front row, but didn’t try to climb the stage; they just stood there, mouths pressed together, their mothers clinging to each other, both fighting tears. The sound that rolled through the hall was the purest “awww” Seven had ever endured.
Enzo’s gauntlet creaked as he reached under his cuisses and drew out a ring. It was understated, silver, and engraved with two crossed arrows and a tiny knight’s helm, which were only visible if you knew to look.
The lights caught on it as he lifted it for the camera. His hand shook. Enzo—the man who rarely even blinked—trembled. The sight gutted Seven. Enzo never shook. Not in court, not in bed, not even when the world seemed to come apart.
“In this world and any other,” he said, still fully in character, “I lay down my blade and my breath at your feet. If you will have me, I vow my strength, my counsel, my name, my home—such as it is and will be—to you and to the Greenwood we carry between us. What I have I will share. What I lack I will learn. I will be your shield where there are arrows and your calm where there is storm. I would be your husband, if you will have me.”
Air stung the back of Seven’s throat, sharp with tears, and something unlocked in him.
Not a door; he’d lived in this house a while.
A window? A skylight, maybe. Because light fell where it hadn’t before.
He burst into tears, grateful when someone thrust a handkerchief—clean, thank God—into his hand to wipe his face.
“Yes,” he managed. The mic carried his voice to the rafters. “Yes.”
As Enzo slid the ring onto Seven’s finger, noise erupted around them.
Ever screamed into Arsen’s shoulder. Shiloh made a strangled, delighted sound and clapped both hands over his mouth.
Glitter rained down along the stage. Security glared at the audience, but Thomas whispered something to them that had their shoulders going lax. Probably an offer to write a check.
The Thalos actor clapped Enzo’s shoulder. “That,” he told the room, “is a natural twenty on persuasion.”
Backstage turned the roar into a hum as Enzo led Seven into a narrow corridor and around a stack of road cases. Enzo removed his helmet, setting it beside them, then lifted both hands to Seven’s face. His thumbs slid to Seven’s jaw. “Hi,” he said.
The word cracked the spell on Seven and sealed it at the same time. A hello and a promise in one syllable.
“Hi,” he whispered back. The word felt small and insufficient.
“I thought for sure you’d bolt the moment I appeared,” Enzo admitted in a voice barely above a whisper. “Was this enough of a spectacle for you?”
Seven blinked rapidly, trying to stave off another wave of tears. His chest ached with the effort of holding too much joy in too small a space. “Yes. Five stars. I can’t believe you did all this…but how?”
“Where there’s a will…” Enzo said softly.
Seven smirked. “So, you wrote a check?”
“Actually, no. Thomas helped me get the name of the right person. Once I told them who you were, they were fully on board. They know this is the kind of PR that money can’t buy.”
Seven nodded, burying his face against the bit of skin available at Enzo’s neck, inhaling deeply, letting his scent smooth all his jagged edges. The world shrank to the faint rasp of Enzo’s stubble against his temple.
Enzo huffed, a small sound that told Seven his heart was pounding, too.
Up close, he smelled like tobacco and vanilla mixed with something boozy—the familiar aroma of the expensive cologne that had soaked into Seven’s DNA.
The same one he sought when he was on the edge. The one that always guaranteed safety.
“Felix lied to me,” Seven said into the warm place where Enzo’s neck met his shoulder. “For days. He said he’d sold his soul for these seats.”
“It’s not like he could tell the truth,” Enzo retorted.
Seven pulled back, still trying to process everything. “So, you did this.”
“I did.” No apology, only the settled look of a man who had decided a thing and changed the world to accommodate it.
“I asked our families to come. I asked Felix to handle the wardrobe because you would forgive him for lying to you faster than you’d forgive me for making you receive my proposal wearing cheap plastic armor. ”
“Accurate,” Seven admitted. “He even sewed in snack pockets.”
Enzo’s surprised laugh echoed throughout the space. “We spared no expense.”
“Did you buy the whole show?”
“No.” Enzo’s mouth tilted. “But I would have.”
The laugh that bubbled out of Seven was beyond his control as reality started to crash in on him on all sides. “That was really…public.”
“Luckily, the stage isn’t much different than the courtroom,” Enzo mused.
“You were absurdly great.” Seven beamed with pride. “I’ll be insufferable about it for the rest of our lives.”
“Good.” Enzo’s eyes darkened. “But that isn’t why I did it.”
“Then why?”
“Because it feels like you’ve waited a long time for someone to choose you out loud,” Enzo answered. “I wanted—just once—to say it so loud that you had no choice but to believe it.”