Chapter 38 #3
“You can’t come with me.”
“Then it had best leave us both where we are.”
The sapphire burned white. For one searing instant, the solar was both ruin and keep, past and future, roofless and whole. Thomas saw Amelia’s mother reach toward nothing. Saw Bree crumple against her husband.
He saw the old sword and the new, one blade across centuries, one love folded through time like a letter sealed in blue fire.
Amelia took a deep breath and lifted her face.
“I choose,” she said, though Thomas did not know whether the sword, the storm, or God himself heard her.
“I choose Ashcombe. I choose this life.”
She turned her head enough to look at him, blue light blazing over her wet lashes, her trembling mouth, the stubborn little lift of her chin that had ruined him from nearly the first day.
“I choose you, Thomas. I love you with all my heart and soul.”
The light struck. The world vanished. Then the portal closed. Silence slammed down and the sword went dark.
Amelia swayed. Thomas caught her before she could fall, sweeping her up into his arms as if she weighed no more than the breath he had nearly lost.
The solar was the solar again. Whole stone. Banked fire. Sun coming through the windows. A table strewn with parchment. A sword lying quiet upon its cloth, the sapphire now simply a stone.
Hob stood against the door, white-faced, axe hanging loose at his side.
Friar Huck’s cheeks were wet.
Thomas held Amelia against him, one hand buried in her hair, the other locked around her waist.
“Amelia.”
Her lashes fluttered.
“Amelia, look at me.”
She opened her eyes.
For one heartbeat, he was still in that terrible blue light. Still losing her. Still reaching across seven hundred years with nothing but his hands and his will.
Then she smiled.
“It worked. I’m still here.”
The breath left him in a sound too broken to be called a laugh.
He set her carefully on her feet, though he did not release her. Could not. His hands framed her face, thumbs brushing away tears and rain and whatever remained of the storm.
“You stayed.”
“I stayed.”
“For me.”
“For you. For Ashcombe. For all of it.” Her laugh trembled. “But mostly for you.”
Something in him broke then. Not the hard, ruined places. Those had already cracked open around her months ago. This was the last iron hinge of fear, giving way.
Thomas bowed his head and kissed her.
Not the careful kiss of the mill, not a stolen breath tucked into the corner of propriety and danger.
This was a kiss with the storm still burning through it, a kiss full of everything he had not known how to say and everything she had crossed centuries to hear.
His mouth took hers with a rough, aching tenderness, fierce enough to make her knees weaken and gentle enough to make her heart split clean open.
Amelia rose into him, fingers knotting in his tunic, holding on as if the world might try to take her again and she meant to leave claw marks on time itself before she let go.
Thomas made a low sound against her mouth, half prayer, half surrender.
His arms closed around her, one at her back, one in her hair, and he kissed her as if he could seal every door between them, as if he could answer every goodbye she had just spoken with one breathless yes.
Huck prayed softly, Hob muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “about bloody time.”
Thomas lifted his head just enough to look at her.
“Marry me.”
She blinked.
Hob made a strangled sound. Huck pressed a hand over his mouth.
Amelia looked around the solar. Her hair had escaped every pin and braid, tumbling down her back to her waist in wild red curls.
Blood marked one knuckle. She had just closed the door on seven hundred years, said farewell to her mother, and chosen a medieval baron with terrible communication skills.
“Is this the medieval version of romance?” she asked.
His jaw tightened. “Amelia.”
There was fear under the impatience. Not fear of battle. Not fear of pain. The fear of a man who had been given happiness and did not yet know whether he was allowed to hold it.
She took his face in both hands.
“Yes.”
His eyes searched hers, as if he did not trust the word.
“Yes, Thomas. I’ll marry you. I’ll marry you in the hall, in the chapel, in front of Huck’s bees, wherever Edith decides is respectable. I’ll marry you even though you brood, stomp about, and prefer swords to talking.”
“She has you there, my lord,” Hob said hoarsely.
Thomas did not look at him. “Be silent.”
Thomas kissed her again. This kiss was softer. Worse, somehow. More ruinous. The first had been storm and terror and finding each other after the world tried to tear them apart. This one was a promise.
Huck cleared his throat.
Then Hob cleared his.
Then Huck cleared his again, louder, because apparently friars had rules about kissing in front of swords, miracles, and witnesses who had not yet been offered sufficient drink.
Thomas broke the kiss, his forehead against hers and muttered a word that would have made Alyson proud.
Amelia laughed against his mouth.
“I’m home,” she said.