21. Lucky & Nick
Lucky I was determined to beat them.
Realistically, I knew I still might lose, despite my will to survive and my mental strength and determination. But I couldn’t help but give everything I had to imagining a successful outcome. I couldn’t afford to do otherwise. Nick couldn’t afford for me to do otherwise.
I lay down next to him. He’d already toed his shoes off, and was lying on top of the covers with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling.
When I joined him, he turned to his side and wrapped his arms around me. We lay like that for hours. Neither of us were hungry, so we skipped the kind offer of dinner from the king.
I wondered if Nick wanted to talk me out of it. One last-ditch effort. But he never did. I think he understood that I wasn’t going to be talked out of it, and that I felt a hundred percent like it was the right thing to do.
After night fell, I started drifting in and out of sleep.
Neither of us wanted to be separated on what might be my last night, so Nick stayed with me.
I drifted, but I don’t think Nick slept the whole night, because whenever I woke, I would open my eyes to find him studying me as though he was trying to memorize my face and burn it permanently into his brain.
Finally, somewhere around daybreak, I came awake to his fingers gently trailing down my face, across my eyelids, and down my jawline.
“Thank you for staying with me,” I whispered.
He still looked shattered. If anything, it had only seemed to deepen as the hours had passed.
“Wild horses couldn’t have dragged me away from you, sunshine.
” His voice was quiet. There had been a stillness to the night, as though the world itself had gone quiet, suspended between life and death.
That same stillness seemed to linger into the morning, and I knew he was feeling it too.
“Sorry I didn’t choose vampirism.”
“It would have killed you to be locked away from the sun for that long,” he said, touching my hair now. “You’re like a flower always seeking sunlight. You would have withered away without it. Living half a life is no life, sunshine. I understood that from the beginning.”
Another hour passed.
It was now seven in the morning.
“Lucky, will you marry me? Right now?”
I blinked. “Now, now?”
He nodded. “I’ll blink someone here who can marry us, and I’m sure Arthur and King Asharien would be willing to be our witnesses for the ceremony.”
My smile felt tremulous when I kissed him. “I’d love to. Let’s get married.”
Fifteen minutes later, I’d changed into a white sundress, wanting something of my own.
Nick had blinked into a white tux, and we were standing in front of a very bemused older wizard who also had a license to perform marriages.
Nick had apparently had to blink up some clothes for him, because he’d arrived stark naked from a recent shower.
I wasn’t there for that, because I’d been hurrying to get ready.
We were standing in the huge atrium. Light was pouring in from the windows and the skylights above, covering everything in a golden glow.
Nick had been busy while I was getting ready. King Asharien and Arthur were standing to the side, both in tuxes, and the room had been entirely transformed for the wedding.
The whole atrium looked like a garden. There was a white and pink rose arch behind the wizard, and flowers lined cobblestone walkways and meandering streams. Somehow, though it was now coming up on eight in the morning, the sun was directly overhead, streaming down onto my shoulders and filling me with warmth and happiness.
It was like finding summer and spring right in the middle of winter.
The ceremony was very short, and then Nick and I were putting the rings he’d blinked up on each other. “If you don’t like yours, I can blink up anything you want.” His hands were shaking as he slid the ring home on my finger.
“It’s perfect.” It didn’t matter to me what he’d chosen, only that he’d chosen it.
And then we were kissing to the witnesses’ polite clapping, and it didn’t matter that our families and friends weren’t there with us. If we wanted to, we could do another ceremony later.
This one was just for us.
After the ceremony, I hurried to shower then get dressed in lounge pants and a tee shirt for the procedure. I tried to dry my hair as much as possible because I hated damp hair when I laid down, then brushed my teeth and did my skincare routine.
It might seem silly to someone else, but I was holding onto normalcy in the eye of the storm. I was terrified, and doing the familiar grounded me in a strange way that was hard to define.
When I came out of the bathroom, Nick was standing there waiting for me. He’d blinked out of his tux and into comfortable joggers and a tee shirt, and he looked way too sexy in them.
I wrapped my arms around his waist and leaned my head on his chest. “Did you ask me to marry you because you’re afraid I’m not going to make it?”
We hadn’t talked about it at all, but it was something I felt needed to be addressed before King Asharien came.
He was still shaking, so I squeezed him tighter, trying to tell him without words how much I loved him.
“No. I asked you because I love you so deeply that it scares me sometimes.” He pulled back a little to look at me.
“I also hoped that some of my strength would become yours. When genies marry, it intermingles our essences. It’s not like what King Asharien is going to do.
It’s softer than that. But you’ll be able to feel me, and I’ll be able to feel you.
I’m hoping you’ll be able to take on some of my immortality.
“Also... I wanted you to know that you’re not alone.
I don’t know if you can feel me yet, but I can feel you.
I’m hoping whatever you go through, you’ll feel like I’m there with you.
That you won’t be as scared. Also, selfishly, I wanted you to really feel what you’re fighting for. I know that’s not fair. I’m sorry.”
He seemed almost ashamed of his selfishness, but I really and truly understood. I would have probably done the same thing if the situation were reversed.
I kissed him again, and we stayed locked in each other’s arms until King Asharien knocked gently on my door.
“I love you,” I reminded him.
“I know,” he said solemnly, making me laugh. Then, “I love you too. I don’t care what you come out as, just come out alive.”
I nodded sharply, then moved toward the bed while he went to answer the door.
Nick
I answered the door and let King Asharien in. He was dressed comfortably like me and Lucky. He also carried a weight with him that was visible in his steps and in the brief nod he gave me as he came in.
Since I was on the opposite side of the room of Lucky, I blinked a couch for me and put it closer to her, facing the bed so I could see her face, but far enough away that my presence wouldn’t interfere in the essence transfer.
“Lucky, I’m bringing Declan here, if that’s okay.”
She nodded, and the king gave his permission when I hesitated, so I immediately blinked my brother to me.
Declan was sweaty, probably because I’d transported him in mid-workout, so I blinked him clean and blinked fresh clothes onto him, then told him what was happening.
He paled, looking behind me at Lucky and King Asharien speaking in low tones across the room, then nodded. “Of course. I’m here for you guys.”
Then he looked at my face, and my fractures must have been showing, because he towed me over to the couch and forcefully pushed me down onto the cushions.
“Sit before you fall over. You look terrible. I’ve never seen a black man so pale before,” he said, keeping his voice low.
My gaze was locked on my wife, but I appreciated my brother’s immediately supportive response.
I loved all of my brothers. I truly did. It was only sometimes that I wanted to drop them into an active volcano.
Lucky nodded at King Asharien, and then he placed his hand on her chest and closed his eyes. As I watched, he became brighter and brighter, filling the room with a warm glow, while at the same time, the skies outside grew darker and darker with the approach of a massive storm.
Lightning flashed, the afterimage a bright solar flare across the room, then the thunder rolled its echoing answer.
As the minutes passed, the flashes picked up speed until all I could see was a flare of light so bright it seemed to have no beginning or end, and the thunder was one continuous roar, as though nature itself was in agony, and this was its only form of expression.
Declan jammed his shoulder solidly against mine, giving me some of his strength and letting me lean on him. I sagged against him, still shaking so bad I felt like an overcaffeinated hula dancer.
Through my magic, I could see the elemental essence the king was transferring from himself to Lucky, and I could literally see it trying to rewrite Lucky’s DNA.
Her chaos magic kept flaring as if in resistance, but it didn’t stop the transference, although I could see the king starting to sag in the chair I’d set for him close to the bed. I would have gone over to help him, but he’d specifically warned me not to touch him.