Chapter 56
FIFTY-SIX
GEMMA
One Week Before
Grim and I returned to the Wharf. He held my hand, taking me upstairs, and to his room. He put me into bed, and I protested about his arm again, but he just lifted the sheets to my chin.
“Sleep,” he commanded.
So I did. When I woke, the sun was setting again. I rubbed my forehead, limbs heavy with sleep. I’d slept through an entire day. Was I already dead?
“You’re late.”
I turned at the voice, finding Lock leaning against the doorjamb. He wore a black three-piece suit with a silver chain hanging from lapel to pocket.
“Not this game again,” I said, sitting up in bed. The last time Lock had appeared in this room saying something cryptic, I’d ended up in the real Underworld. “What am I late for?”
He grinned, his teeth white and sharp, the piercing in his lip glinting in the dying sun.
“You’ll find what you need in the closet.” He nodded in the direction, then shut the door.
I stared at the door for a minute. Wedding?
I pushed the silky black sheets from my body, feet hitting cold hardwood. Inside the closet hung the most gorgeous, black lace dress, backlit by pale, white gold light.
I slid my touch across the fabric. I was no stranger to expensive dresses, had worn everything from vintage Chanel to Iris van Herpen, so it wasn’t its perceived value that had my heart pounding. Those dresses weren’t made for me, they’d been draped on me like I was an expensive mannequin.
This dress clung to me like a secret. Black as the ocean the first time Grim took me, it bared my collarbones and shoulders in a soft, deliberate drape.
The fabric pooled low across my chest as if gravity itself were complicit.
Lace traced my body in sheer, suggestive panels.
Lightweight chiffon fell dark and weightless, and a sharp slit opened on the side from ankle to thigh.
I swayed back and forth in the mirror, watching the fabric ripple in the air. I’d never worn a dress like this, one that reflected my soul. This wasn’t just a dress, it was what Persephone would have worn when she reigned in the underworld, what Psyche did wear to her wedding.
Once again, I was shaken by just how much Grim knew me.
The necklace Grim had given me glinted smoky red between my collarbones, the only color on my body. With a deep inhale, I headed downstairs.
Lock and Raze were waiting for me. Raze was dressed similarly to Lock, in a dark black suit, but his tie was textured, like velvet and lace.
“All right…” I said, hitting the floor. “What now?”
They exchanged a look, then wordlessly held out their arms. Nonplussed, I encircled my arms in theirs. They led me out the back of the house, across the abandoned pier, and onto the beach.
The sand was silvery under the moonlight. The midnight blue sky was painfully clear, stars sharp and overbright with winter. Rows of tea lights glimmered, casting a flickering orange glow against the sand. The lights were arranged parallel, leading from where I stood down to…Grim.
Where the tide met the earth, Grim stood, water splashing at the hem of his black pants. He wore a black dress shirt, unbuttoned and folded up to his forearms. Grim was already looking at me, smiling, before I’d realized he was there.
“What is this?” I asked, too nervous to say aloud my hope.
They didn’t answer.
I swallowed, because I already knew. This was an aisle for a wedding. That was what the tea lights were for. I tried to imagine four scary, reckless criminals spending time lighting hundreds of candles. It did not compute.
“Traditionally the father gives the bride away,” I said, trying to ease the nerves glittering inside me.
“But we’re not traditional,” Raze continued.
“We’re not giving you away,” Lock said. “We’re walking you down this aisle and into the family. You’re stuck with us.”
Their hands landed on my arm, securing my place interlocked with them. Then we walked down the makeshift aisle. My breath came shaky, not from nerves, but hope. I’d forced myself into their world with a tattoo. Now they were saying they wanted me here, for real.
A warmth slid into my heart, down into my bones.
Safe.
Beyond the danger that I knew would lurk in this world, I—my soul—was safe. These men knew who I was. They had seen all the skeletons in my closet (and had even put a few there) and they still welcomed me.
The sound of the ocean and soft crunch of sand was my wedding march. I thought back to Psyche, arrayed in funeral attire for her wedding. Escorted to fate, finding freedom in death.
Gemma Crowne was dead, but I was just getting started.
I stopped before Grim. Wraith stood next to him, in the middle of us both. Was he officiating? I tried picturing his tattooed, monstrous face asking me to take my husband. Lock released me and stepped to Grim’s side. Raze joined him.
“Hey, Rich Girl,” he said softly.
“Hi,” I said. I bit my lip, looking at the makeshift wedding. “What does it mean to marry the king of the damned?”
“Marry?” he asked. He arched a brow, slightly tilting his head in a way that accented the sharp shadow of his jaw.
“This isn’t a wedding?” I said, throwing my arms out and gesturing to, well, everything. The dress, the aisle, the fucking officiant.
“You can leave a marriage,” Grim clarified.
I sucked in a breath just as Wraith started talking.
His speech was different from the usual wedding fare.
Darker. Wraith spoke of death and eternity.
Of soulmates and things only fate could know.
I tried to focus on it, but my attention kept slipping to Grim.
He stared at me relentlessly, like a sailor finding land, like a wolf worshipping the moon.
His black shirt was undone, showing our first tattoo.
Wraith stopped speaking and Grim took my hand in his.
“Gemma—”
“I didn’t prepare vows,” I said, cutting him off. “I didn’t know.”
A secret smile speared his lips. He released my hands and wrapped his hand around my neck.
“You already said your vows,” he said, thumbing my tattoo for emphasis. “Now it’s my turn.”
I don’t remember if I responded. I was stuck in the soft way his voice caught, but still hinted at something dangerous. In his gentle, possessive stroke on my neck paralleled by the hot gleam in his eyes.
I swallowed and simply nodded.
“This tattoo doesn’t mean I own you, it means you own me.
Your safety, your well-being, your life, are all mine to keep safe.
If you want something, I’ll give it to you before you have to ask.
You will always have a home here. The Horsemen are your family.
They will protect you from anything, even me. You will never be alone.”
Grim thumbed my cheek, swiping fugitive tears away. His palm lingered on my face, cradling.
“I was dead until you.” With his free hand, Grim took my own and pressed it to his bare chest, against the tattoo. “Now my heart beats inside your chest. I will always be in your debt.”
Before I could think, he dragged me in for a devouring kiss.
It wasn’t hunger fusing our lips together, so much as inevitability, like gravity finally giving in.
His mouth claimed mine with the weight of his vows.
I felt it everywhere: in my ribs, in the ache behind my eyes, in the place where fear used to live.
The world narrowed to breath and heat and the quiet violence of being chosen completely.
Someone coughed.
“I think you’re supposed to wait until the end for that,” Lock said wryly.
Reluctantly, Grim pulled back, our faces still close.
“Wraith has something to ask you, Barbie,” Raze said.
I waited, expecting him to ask if I took Grim as my lawful husband until death do us part—you know, the usual.
“Will you take Grim in death and let life never part you?”
I swallowed. That was so much more intense. My eyes returned to Grim’s and his stare caught me like a hook, stripped of everything but me. No command. No demand. Just a depth that made my chest ache.
You have three lives. Your past, your present, and your future. Grim owned my heart in all of them.
I sold my soul to him in my past life.
Died for him in my present.
Hoped to make a life together with him in my future.
Our past swirled between us in watercolor memories. That empty high school room, where we first collided in pain and blood. The warm, July night when I tried to kill myself and Grim stole my life for safekeeping. And now here, alive only in death.
Death had always been a dark root twisted at our ankles, weaving our stories together.
I smiled. “There was never another ending for us.”
We kissed, sealing our vows in this life and the next.