Chapter 32
Chapter
Thirty-Two
Elena's hands are steady on the ultrasound wand.
My fingers grip the edges of the exam bed, knuckles white, while the screen fills with gray static and Elena adjusts the angle against my stomach. The gel is cold. The machine hums.
Maximus stands beside the bed. His hand is on my shoulder.
Elena moves the wand. The image shifts. Gray on gray. Shapes I can't read.
"There," Elena says.
She stops moving. The screen holds.
I see it. A profile. Small, but unmistakable. A head. A body tucked tight. The curve of a spine. Arms drawn up. Inside the chest, a flicker, fast and rhythmic.
"That's the heartbeat," Elena says. Her voice is careful. "Consistent with approximately twelve weeks."
"Twelve weeks." My voice comes out flat. "You said seven to nine."
"I was estimating from marker levels without imaging. Twelve weeks is more accurate." She pauses. "Conception aligns with early March."
The hand on my shoulder tightens. Once. Then releases.
Elena moves the wand. The image shifts again. She stops. Goes still.
"Elena?"
She doesn't answer. She adjusts the angle. Presses down slightly. Moves the wand two inches to the right and holds it there.
The screen shows a second profile.
Same size. Same curl of spine. Same flicker in the chest, fast and steady and perfectly in time with the first.
"Oh," Elena says. Very quiet.
"There are two," she says.
I look at the screen. Two babies. Two heartbeats. Two.
Two.
My hand goes to my stomach.
Two. There are two.
I look at Maximus.
His face has done the thing it did in our quarters when I told him. His eyes are on the screen, and his jaw is working, and his hand on my shoulder is shaking.
"Twins," Elena says. "Both viable. Both with strong cardiac activity. Both healthy as far as I can measure." She sets down the wand. "Too early to determine gender. We'll need another scan for that."
She sits on the rolling stool. Presses her palms flat on her knees.
"I don't have a framework for one," she says. "For two, I have even less."
"Join the club," I say.
Maximus hasn't moved. His eyes are unfocused. His jaw is still working.
I reach up and take his hand off my shoulder and hold it. His fingers close around mine.
"Twelve weeks," he says. His voice is rough. "Both of them. Since March."
"Since March."
He looks at me. I look at him. The ultrasound gel is cold on my skin and the exam bed is narrow and the fluorescent light is buzzing and none of it matters.
"I need to clean this up," Elena says from the stool. She hasn't moved.
"Take your time," I say.
She takes her time.
We walk back to our quarters. His arm is around me.
Inside, he closes the door.
"I asked Marcellus to officiate a wedding," he says. "Tonight. In the garden."
"When did you ask him?"
"Three days ago. Isabelle has been preparing the garden. I asked her to make you a dress." His thumb traces the crest ring on my finger. The M and C that already lives there. "I wasn't planning to wait."
Three days ago. Before the farm strikes. Before the feral containment. Before I told him about the pregnancy. He was planning this before any of it.
I look at him. This man asked his second-in-command to officiate, asked Isabelle to make a wedding dress, and arranged the entire thing while running farm strikes and a media cover story. And didn't mention it until now.
"Mira has the dress," he says. "She's waiting for you."
He kisses me once. Then he walks toward his study, and I walk toward our quarters.
The door is open. Candlelight from inside, which is wrong because I didn't leave candles burning. I step through.
Mira is standing beside the bed in a blush dress. Behind her, the wedding dress is laid across the covers.
Cream. Floor-length. The beading catches the candlelight in tiny points that shift when the air moves. Lace at the sleeves, fine enough that I can see through it. The front is cut low.
I touch the fabric. Cool under my fingers. Heavier than it looks, the weight of the beading pulling the silk down so it hangs straight.
"Isabelle finished the beading an hour ago," Mira says. She lifts the dress off the bed. The silk slides between her fingers. "Strip."
I pull my shirt over my head. Step out of my pants. Mira folds them without comment and sets them on the chair.
"Arms up."
I raise my arms. She guides it over my head.
The lining settles against my skin, cool at first, then warming.
Mira adjusts the shoulders. Smooths the fabric down my sides.
Steps behind me and does something to the back I can't see.
Her fingers work small hooks, one at a time, pulling the fabric close against my ribs.
"Mirror," she says.
I turn.
The woman in the mirror is wearing a cream dress that falls to the floor, lace and beading catching the light with every breath. Her hair is down. The neckline cuts low enough to show the crescent mark on her chest, crimson against cream, pulsing over her heart.
I don't look like a fighter. I don't look like a vampire who spent last night pulling ferals off playground fences. I look like someone about to walk into a garden and change her name.
Mira appears behind me in the mirror. She puts her chin on my shoulder.
"You look like someone getting married," she says.
"That's the idea."
"You'll cry."
"I won't."
"You will. And if you don't, I will."
She kisses both my cheeks and leaves.
Simone is in the corridor. Blush dress. Her hair is swept up, loose curls framing her face, a few strands left down at the back of her neck. She looks at me and her mouth opens and nothing comes out.
"Don't," I say. "If you start, I'll start."
"You look like Mom."
My throat closes. I breathe through it.
Simone takes my hand. Her grip is steady. Stronger than it was a week ago. Stronger than the week before that.
Footsteps in the corridor. Julian. He's in a dark suit, his collar straight, his hair combed back.
The black patch over his left eye cuts a line across his temple where the skin is still pink.
I've never seen Julian in a suit. He looks like a different man, except for the eye that's left. That one hasn't changed.
"I'm here to walk you," he says.
I look at him.
"Maximus asked," Julian says. "I said yes before he finished the sentence."
My eyes burn. I blink it back.
Julian offers his arm. I take it. Simone falls in at my other side.
We walk to the garden.
I stop at the entrance.
Candles line the path from here to the bench.
Each one at the same height, the same distance from the next, the spacing precise in a way that says Isabelle measured with something other than her eye.
The floodlights are off. Caleb has redirected the compound's exterior lighting so it falls indirect against the oaks instead of down on the garden, and the candles do the rest.
The bench is clean. The scar on the oak from the compound assault is uncovered. Nobody asked to hide it. I'm glad.
The oaks lean. Caleb strung lights in the branches.
Marcellus stands at the arch. The arch isn't an arch. It's the oaks themselves, the branches angled overhead, the lights catching the leaves. Marcellus is in a dark suit. His expression is solemn.
The inner circle is the congregation. Elena beside Marcellus, posture straight. Seraphina at the front. Isabelle and Caleb and Ethan in a row behind them. Dr. Dalton and Dr. Sullivan near the garden wall. Carson three paces behind them, clean shirt, crooked tie.
Alexei at the back. Outside the circle. He's watching Simone.
And at the tree line, arrived within the hour, Lanthar. He stands apart from the others, still in the armor he wore through the Veil crossings. Veyran a step behind him. He inclines his head when I glance toward him. He came back for this.
Maximus is at the arch.
He's in black. His shirt is open at the collar. The M and C crest on his finger catches the candles. He isn't smiling. He's watching me walk toward him, and his jaw is tight, and his eyes are bright.
Julian walks me to him. His arm is steady under mine. When we reach the arch, Julian steps back. Simone squeezes my hand once and lets go.
I reach him.
Marcellus speaks.
"We are here because two people have chosen each other." His voice carries without volume. The garden holds it. "In this compound. In the middle of a war. In front of the people who have fought beside them."
He looks at Maximus. Then at me.
"The old forms ask if you come freely. If you bind willingly. If you understand that what is joined tonight is joined in front of witnesses who will hold you to it."
He pauses.
"Maximus. Do you come freely?"
"I do."
"Celeste. Do you come freely?"
"I do."
"Do you bind willingly, knowing what you are to each other and what you will be asked to carry?"
"Yes," Maximus says.
"Yes," I say.
Mira steps forward. She's holding two cards.
"I wrote these," she says. "You may read what I gave you. You may read what is in you. You may read both."
She gives me mine.
I read it once. The handwriting is hers. The words aren't. They're mine. She listened.
I look up at Maximus. He's holding his card. He hasn't read it yet. He's looking at me.
"I had a speech," he says. "Mira wrote one that's better. But I'm not going to read either of them."
He takes my hands.
"I said everything I needed to say in the garden.
" His voice drops. "But I'll say this. I have lived a long time.
I have built territories, held alliances, buried people I loved.
None of it prepared me for you. You don't belong to me.
You never did. But you chose me, and I'm going to spend whatever time I have earning that. "
Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry.
I cry.
"I had a speech too," I say. My voice is wrecked. "I was going to be cool about this."
His mouth twitches.
"You're not cool."
"Shut up. I'm very cool." I wipe my eyes. "You gave me clean blood and a place to belong and the first person in my life who didn't need me to be strong all the time." My voice cracks. "I'm keeping you."