Chapter 35 #2
“I don’t have a clean speech,” he says, and there’s a weak, self-hating twist to his mouth. “I tried to make one in my head on the way here, and it sounded like shit. Too formal. Too much like something a man says when he wants to dress terror in expensive words. So, you’re getting this instead.”
My throat tightens, and my heart pounds so fast, I hear the gush in my ears.
He exhales and keeps going.
“I lost eight years, and you lived them. That’s the part I keep coming back to when I’m alone, and my head gets quiet enough to be cruel.
I lost the memories, but you had to carry them.
You carried the worst of me and the best of us with no one to hand it to.
You built yourself into a King around a wound I didn’t even know I gave you.
And then I came back into your life and made you wait again because I was too fucked up to hold all of it at once. ”
I start to speak, but he lifts his free hand slightly, stopping me.
“Let me finish,” he says. “Please.”
That please again. Softer this time, but no less devastating.
I nod.
“I know you’re married. I know what the world sees when it looks at you.
I know there’s a woman in this house with your name attached to hers by contract and politics and all the bullshit our families use to make cages look respectable.
I know I don’t get to undo that by being jealous and dramatic and Russian about it. ”
A helpless laugh catches in my throat despite everything.
His mouth flickers. “Don’t laugh. I’m being sincere, and it’s fucking awful.”
“I’m not laughing at you.”
“You are a little.”
“I adore you a little.”
That hits him hard enough that his eyes close briefly. When he opens them again, something in them has steadied.
“Good,” he says quietly. “Because I adore you completely.”
The words go through me like a blade warmed in fire. He looks at the hand still closed against his chest, then finally opens it.
A ring rests in his palm.
For a second, I don’t breathe.
It isn’t gaudy. That’s the first absurd thing my mind notices because it needs somewhere safe to go before the emotion takes its legs out.
Dark metal, almost black, with a thin line of gold worked through it like a faultline of light inside stone. Simple at a glance, devastating up close. Inside the band, I can see engraving, though not clearly from where I’m sitting.
My hands remain still on the sheets because if I move too fast, I’m not sure what part of me will break open first.
Nikolaj’s voice drops lower.
“I had this made before Isle Lucia,” he says.
“Before I knew if I had the right. Before I knew if I’d ever give it to you.
I told myself it was stupid. That you were married, that we were Kings, that men like us don’t get rings unless they’re signing contracts or sealing alliances or making heirs they’ll eventually ruin.
I told myself every practical reason not to bring it here tonight. ”
He looks up at me then, and there is no mask left.
“Then I realized I don’t give a fuck.”
My breath shudders out of me.
He shifts closer between my legs, not giving the ring to me yet, not forcing the offer into my hand. Just holding it where I can see.
“I can’t give you a legal marriage,” he says.
“Not now. Maybe not ever in a way the world will acknowledge without trying to put us both in graves. I can’t stand beside you in public and call you mine without starting a war before we’re ready for one.
I can’t undo eight years. I can’t erase the contract with Arabella by wanting it gone.
I can’t give you something clean, Vincenzo. ”
His voice cracks slightly on my name, but he steadies it with visible effort.
“But I can give you forever in the only way that’s mine to give.
I can give you the truth before strategy.
I can give you every morning I can steal, and every night I can make safe.
I can give you my blood, my name, my fucking loyalty, the parts of me they tried to carve out, and the parts that came back meaner for surviving it.
I can give you a place no one else touches. I can give you this.”
My vision blurs, and I blink hard, uselessly. Nikolaj sees it and looks like the sight hurts him, but he doesn’t stop.
“You were my prince when we were young, then you became a King without me, and I hate that. I hate that you had to do that alone. But you are My King now, too, not because of the Families, not because of your bloodline, not because any council put a title on your head. Mine. The king of my heart, if you want the dramatic Russian version.” His mouth twists around a tiny, nervous smile that disappears almost immediately.
“And I know that sounds fucking ridiculous in English, but it’s true. ”
A tear slips down my cheek before I can stop it.
His eyes follow it, glassy and stricken, but he keeps his hand steady.
“So, I’m asking, not in front of God, because fuck Him for what He let happen, and not in front of our families, because they’ve taken enough, and not in front of any law that would call this impossible.
I’m asking here. In your bed. After an argument.
While you’re still angry at me, and I’m still trying to learn how not to ruin everything I love by trying to protect it. ”
He lifts the ring slightly.
“Be mine forever,” he says. “Not in theory. Not as memory. Not only when the doors are locked, but also when the world is quiet. Mine in the way that matters. Mine when it’s hard, when we’re angry, when we fuck up, when the blood starts moving around us again, and every instinct we have says to lie first and confess later.
Be mine, and I’ll be yours. No title above it.
No crown before it. Just us, choosing each other like we should’ve been allowed to do eight years ago. ”
I can’t speak. For once in my life, I genuinely cannot shape language.
The room around us has narrowed to his face, the ring in his hand, and the feeling of my own heart trying to tear its way out through my ribs.
I think about Arabella, and the contract between us, and the strange mercy of her own confession, Marie’s name in her mouth, the possibility that our marriage might become shelter instead of prison.
I think about my father teaching me that love is weakness, about Lucien proving that loyalty can rot unnoticed, about every single structure in my life being designed to make me useful rather than happy.
And I think about Nikolaj on his knees between my legs, terrified and stubborn and beautiful, asking me for forever like it’s something we can steal back from history with bloody hands.
Maybe we can.
Maybe that’s always been our particular talent.
I reach for him—not the ring first. Him. My hands close around his face, and I drag him up enough so that I can kiss him. It’s clumsy because I’m crying now, really crying; no elegant tears I can pretend away.
He makes a broken sound against my mouth and kisses me back, one hand still carefully curled around the ring between us as if he refuses to risk dropping it even while I’m wrecking him.
When I pull back, our foreheads touch. His breathing is ragged. Mine is worse.
“Yes,” I say, and laugh through the tears, breathless and ruined. “Yes, Nikolaj.”
He stares at me like he didn’t actually expect to survive the answer.
“Say it again,” he whispers.
“Yes,” I repeat, hands still holding his face.
“I’ll be yours forever. I’ve been yours for years, you unbearable bastard.
I was yours when you forgot me. I was yours when I tried to hate you for it.
I was yours in every room I drank myself empty in and every bed I refused to share properly. I’m yours now.”
His face crumples, not fully. He’s still Nikolaj. Still proud enough to fight his own tears like they’re enemies at the gate. But his mouth trembles once, and his eyes go wet, and I see the exact moment the fear in him breaks under relief.
“Fuck,” he whispers. “Fuck, Vincenzo.”
I hold out my hand before either of us can lose courage.
His fingers shake as he takes my hand in his. The ring catches the lamplight, black and gold, dark and bright, impossible and real. Then he slides it onto my finger.
It fits.
The sight of it there—on my hand, not for law, not for cameras, not for contract, but for him—nearly destroys me all over again.
Nikolaj bends and kisses the ring first. Then my knuckles. Then the inside of my wrist, where my pulse is racing too fast to hide. His mouth lingers there, warm and reverent, and when he looks up at me from between my legs, there is something in his face I know I’ll carry with me until I die.
Relief. Devotion. Fear still, yes, but softer now. Shared.
“My king,” he murmurs.
I look down at the ring, then back at him. “My husband.”
The word hits him like a bullet.
His whole body stills. His eyes flare wide, and I watch it land in him, deeper than any title, deeper than anything we’re allowed to say in public yet.
Husband. Not legally. Not socially. Not in any way the world can bless without turning a knife in the same hand. But here, in this room, between the two of us, it’s truer than anything signed by men at tables.
His voice comes out wrecked. “Say that again.”
I cup his jaw, thumb brushing over the sharp line of it, and give him the word like a vow. “My husband.”
He climbs over me so fast I barely have time to breathe before his mouth is on mine, and this kiss is all relief, all terror, all love.
I wrap my arms around his neck and hold him there while he presses me back into the pillows, still careful with his weight even when his control is visibly fraying. The ring is cool on my finger, where my hand slides into his hair. He feels it too. His breath catches when the band brushes his skin.
I smile against his mouth, and he groans softly. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Smile like that. I’m already barely holding on.”
“Good,” I whisper, and kiss him again.
He laughs once, broken and low, and then buries his face against my throat, arms tightening around me as if the ring changed the gravity in the room.
Maybe it did. Maybe some choices do that. They don’t solve the world outside. They don’t erase the marriage contract, the summit, Lucien, the Families, or the guilt over the plans I’ve made without him. But they change the center of things.
For the first time in eight years, I don’t feel like I’m waiting for something lost to return.
It’s here.
He’s here.
And I have his ring on my hand to prove it.
I turn my face into his hair and close my eyes, letting him hold me so tightly it almost hurts.
“Still angry?” he murmurs against my neck after a while.
“Yes,” I say, because I promised honesty before control, and apparently that applies to both of us now.
His arms tighten. “Still mine?”
I look at the ring on my finger and feel my heart answer before my mouth does.
“Forever,” I say.
Nikolaj goes utterly still around me for one long, devastating second.
Then he kisses me again, like forever has finally learned how to answer back.