Chapter 48
Celeste could not concentrate on soil like this. Despite the closed window, the siege noises invaded her sanctuary. It was all she could do to stay still. She pressed her fists against the book, but there was no hope while he was there, leading his men against her castle.
Footsteps clattered in the doorway. Rue again, with news she didn’t want to hear.
Celeste did not look up. “Please. I need silence. I’ve told you—”
“If you wanted quiet, you should not have declared war on me.”
Her head shot up. It wasn’t Rue.
Hawk filled the arch like a storm held at bay by stone. His arms were folded, forearms drawn taut beneath the sleeves, a stance that bent the air to his command.
War on him? How could anyone hope to survive? He was the image of a war god made flesh, epaulets for his armor, silver hair for his helm.
She couldn’t look at him. Not when her heart was already threatening to split her chest with its pace. She stared down at the book still open on the desk. The lines swam, black ink bleeding onto the page.
“The servants followed me of their own free will,” she said quietly, eyes fixed on a root system diagram. “I didn’t force them to come.”
“I don’t blame them,” he said.
His voice was lower than she remembered, frayed at the edges, as if something inside him had been dragged over stone. The sound curled through her, unwanted and too welcome, and her grip on the book tightened until the paper crinkled.
Her eyes remained downcast. “You once told me the castle was impregnable.”
She heard the soft thud of his boots across the rug. The boards creaked faintly beneath his weight. He came closer. Closer still. She saw the dirt on his cuffs, the stain at his collar. He no doubt had traveled through hell and refused to rest.
Then, without warning, her book lifted from her grasp.
“Agriculture?” he asked, his tone caught between confusion and disbelief.
She blinked. Her fingers curled into fists in her lap. Before she could find her voice, he reached into his coat. Her body stiffened, ready to receive another cruel document from the solicitor.
But then he pulled out a small, worn volume. Her breath stilled.
“I brought you better reading material.”
He placed it on the desk.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Her copy. The spine was slightly frayed, and the cover still bore the faint smudge of cocoa powder she had spilled on it months ago.
“You were right about Shakespeare. It is useless, and it only brings chaos. Can I have my practical book back, please?”
“I don’t want you to do a practical thing in your life ever again,” he said.
She forced her chin higher. If she could hold her neck steady, perhaps he wouldn’t see the rest breaking. “You don’t get to order me about anymore. You signed that right away to your solicitor, remember?”
She glanced up—and wished she hadn’t. He looked like a man who had crushed a butterfly in his fist by accident and now dared not open his hand.
The sight sent a flare of heat through her chest. He thought her that fragile?
Perhaps she was—inside, wings torn, breath shallow.
But she was done showing him her brittleness.
“I was doing my duty,” he said. His voice was rough, stripped bare. “I could not go to war and leave you unprotected.”
She swept her hand toward the walls towering around them. “Do I look unprotected to you?”
“Perhaps… perhaps you needed no protection at all.”
Celeste held herself stiff. Yes, she needed nothing. She had a fortress of stone, and she would turn it into armor, walling out everyone—including him.
“Now that you’ve looked in on me and satisfied your duty, you are free to go.” Her tone was even, but the evenness cost her. “I imagine you are tired. You should rest.”
She rose too quickly, her knees trembling, and crossed to the window. The pane bit cold against her fingertips, a welcome sting against the fire beneath her skin.
Behind her came the slow tread of his boots. Yes, he needed to leave. Before she crumbled.
The silence thickened. His presence pressed against her back, heat and weight without a single touch.
“You wanted me to marry another man,” she whispered. The words scraped out of her like glass shards, cutting her lips, her throat, her heart.
The hurt was unbearable. Yet her body betrayed her, leaning toward him as if it had forgotten the wound.
He had broken her, and still some desperate part of her wished him to kiss the pain away.
One breath, one tilt, and she could press into him, let his steadiness swallow the ache, pretend she hadn’t already splintered once in his hands.
But she knew better now.
“And it was the hardest thing I ever did,” he said, his voice roughened, dragged up from the pit where he kept every wound. “Watching you dance with him… It cut me deeper than any French saber. Broke me where no marshal ever could.”
Her eyes fluttered shut, lashes wet against her cheeks. The words struck low, stealing breath from her chest, leaving only the ache. It throbbed like surrender, tempting her to yield, to believe.
“What do you want here, Alexander?”
“I want you.”
Her grip tightened on the sill. “For how long? Don’t tell me. I know. Until you’re called back to war. Until duty forces you to go away again. You said it yourself. That we lived in different worlds. That I didn’t belong in yours.”
The bitterness scorched her tongue, sharp and small and unworthy of the love she still carried for him. But pain was all she had left to armor herself.
“I resigned from active service. My only duty now is to you. And making you happy.”
Her heart thrashed in her chest like a bird panicked in a cage. She couldn’t breathe.
“Please,” she whispered. “I fought in the battle for your heart, and I lost.” A sob rose in her throat, but she swallowed it quickly. “You’re the general who never surrenders. And I… I’m the girl who always does. But I’m not strong enough to do it again.”
She looked away, her whole body trembling. “It hurts too much.”
Her words still hung in the air when she heard the scrape of steel.
Slowly, she turned.
Hawk had drawn his sword. The gleaming blade that had carved victory out of chaos, that had carried him through a dozen campaigns.
And then, God help her, he bent. The general who had never surrendered was lowering himself, one knee sinking to the rug, the other braced.
He set the weapon flat at her feet, the hilt angled toward her like an offering. His hands lingered there, splayed wide, as though releasing not just the sword but every piece of armor he had ever worn.
Celeste could only look as he lifted his palms, first to his chest, then behind his head.
Exposed. Unprotected. No shield, no defense.
Her lungs forgot how to work. The man who held whole battalions in his palm was on his knees before her.
It was like watching the tide reverse, or the heavens stoop to touch the earth.
He looked up at her then, and his eyes burned not with command, but with raw supplication. “This is all of me. No army, no rank, no fortress. Only a man. I’d rather live one night in your world than a lifetime in mine. I surrender to you, Celeste.”
The tears tore out of her, racking her frame. Her chest cracked wide open, as if her ribs had finally surrendered, admitting they could no longer hold the storm inside.
Was this truly happening?
To her?
To the girl who once trembled at shadows, who hid in fantasies because real life cut too deep?
Her knees gave way, and she sank before him.
“Don’t do this,” she sobbed. Her fingers clutched at him, trying to haul him up. “You don’t have to do this.”
Her chest filled, aching, breaking, remaking itself all at once. And what poured through her was love. A love fierce and consuming, made not of illusions but of scars and surrender. “I love you.”
He closed his arms around her, the safest place she had ever known. His exhale shuddered against her temple. Then his mouth moved across her face in reverent strokes—her cheek, her nose, her damp lashes, patching every fracture between them.
The world narrowed to breath and heartbeat, his mouth moving with hers until she lost the borders of her own body. Time unraveled. Minutes, hours, she could not tell or care. She only clung to his warmth, terrified that if she looked the spell would shatter.
She was threading her fingers through his hair when she touched something pointed. Drawing back just enough, she plucked it, a single ivy leaf. His coat was smeared with mud. There were twigs in his riding breeches.
A laugh trembled through her. “You decided to wear Oberon’s crown after all?”
His mouth twisted in wry self-mockery. “I wanted to surprise you with a Shakespearean declaration,” he murmured, his voice rough against her temple. “What would the king of fairies do now?”
"He’d turn into a jackass and cause mischief in the woods,” she whispered, eyes moist. “But I’d rather he kept kissing Titania instead.”
Heat surged through her as his tongue swept across hers, coaxing, claiming, drawing her deeper. His stubble rasped her skin, rough where she was soft, each scrape sending sparks down her spine. He kissed her harder, as if every breath he took had to come through her.
Her body arched to meet him, pressed chest to chest, her pulse rioting in her throat. No castle walls, no troops, no pride. Only this man who had knelt for her, and now held her as though surrender had never tasted so sweet.
“Your declaration was better than any romantic comedy I ever read,” she said, breathless when he finally pulled back.
“Was it?”
She nodded, brushing her brow against his, a smile trembling through the tears.
“Then that means you’ll marry me.”
“Yes,” she laughed, unsteady and radiant all at once. “We shall marry on Midsummer Night, and we will—”
“No.” His hand framed her face, thumb stroking her cheek. “We’ll marry today, Celeste. Now. I won’t wait another hour.”
She blinked at him, stunned.
“I nearly cast you away once,” he said, voice breaking as though the memory still gutted him. “The greatest gift I’ve ever been given. Never again.”
And then he kissed her with all the hunger of a man who had marched through war and finally come home to find heaven waiting.