Chapter 33 Epilogue 3 Lovers under the Loving Moon #3
She fell silent, but her eyes were vivid with curiosity, the same bright curiosity that had filled them at every full moon, as she healed him. Bringing her research to bear. Unpuzzling a problem. Solving.
“You want to try to go through,” said Osric.
She bit her lip, a bit impish, a bit wild. “Would you come with me if I did?”
“I’m offended that you think it necessary to ask,” said Osric. “I’d go with you anywhere. I want to be by your side for—for a long time.”
“Don’t be by my side. Be in my arms.”
She slipped her arm through his and leaned her head on his shoulder. He thought his heart would burst.
They stepped out of the hothouse. It was the loveliest hour of the year, evening at the spring equinox.
The light gentled around them. Frozen grass fractured musically underfoot.
An overgrown path led them to a stand of plum trees in bloom.
The flowers grew in pink clusters so thick that, however many petals fell, there was no thinning of the glorious froth in the boughs above.
Osric and Aurienne took in deep breaths of the blossoms and deeper scents—moss, rushing sap, spring’s pulse in the soil.
Above them, a full moon hung, white and still.
Aurienne, looking up at it, said, “That’s the Cúsc moon. That’s when it all began, last year.”
“What does Cúsc mean?” asked Osric.
“Chaste.”
“Bah.”
“Not chaste in the sense of sexual purity, but rather an older definition: truthfulness or faithfulness, especially to one’s true love.”
“Oh.”
A blossom fell on her shoulder. Osric picked it up and tucked it behind her ear.
She looked up at him with eyes dark and gentle.
Tumbling petals reflected in their soft brilliance, like minute constellations.
“I don’t want to go home,” she said. “But I ought to. It would be—it would be heavenly not to have to say goodbye so often.”
She leaned her cheek into his touch, and his heart truly did burst. The explosion gave him courage, propelled him. He wanted again, but it was a wanting to give.
“Then let’s not say goodbye anymore,” he said. “I’d like you to have something. You must promise you won’t reject it.”
She saw that he was serious and she, too, grew serious. “I promise.”
He brought his hand up. With a heart suddenly racing and the sound of his own blood in his ears, he worked the heavy signet ring off his finger.
A soft, surprised inhalation escaped Aurienne.
Had she thought he wouldn’t do it again?
She had. With incredulous joy, she said, “After what I did the last time, I hardly dared hope—but I did—”
(Hope was a delightful malady. More people ought to suffer from it.)
“I want to be yours,” said Osric. “And I want all of this to be yours. Not bits of it. Not the De humani or a rose. All of it. Rosefell Hall, all of its empty rooms—make use of them. For your lab, for beds, for anything you need. There are loads of windowsills for your orchids. Loads of rats for your cat. I want you to have all of it, myself included. If you’ll have it—if you’ll have me. ”
Petals like pale moons clung to her hair. Tears filled her eyes as, for the second time, he pressed the ring into her hand. Only this time, she wasn’t fleeing into a ley line. This time, she stayed.
He stood in shadow, she in light. They took a step towards each other.
They had spent so long upon these thresholds, on lines uncrossed, on almosts.
It ended there. It was a drawing together of two solitudes, both wrought of the same thing.
Love. Burning hope. They met in the dappled place in between.
A terra nullius, ground untrod, sacred, crossed by striations of light.
The filigree of the blooming boughs above, passing over Aurienne in flutters of light and dark, gave a beautiful witchery to her face. Their time together had given him light, but it had given her darkness.
Her tear-laden smile was as beautiful as a full-blown rose.
She clutched the ring in her hand. This time, this time, neither promises nor hearts would be broken.
This time, there would be no inevitable goodbye.
And it was absurd, this enormity of feeling reduced to a whisper, from her sobbed “Yes” to his throaty “I love you,” but it was all they could manage.
They were going to be together. She had accepted his ring.
She flew towards him like light skimming over water, like a promise finally kept.
The world spun slowly. Petals fell to their delicate deaths in long Fibonacci spirals.
Her embrace was so tight it bordered on suffocation.
He drew her against him just as tightly, until he could feel her quivering, until he could feel her heart.
Salt kisses. An ache in chest and throat.
Heartstrings stretched. Blood turbulent.
The haze of joy. He never wanted to sober up from this feeling, this witchery, this sacrament; it was so good, it was like a passing over, like a lovely end.
And how strange that an end should feel so much like a beginning.
They came together at last in that strange equinoctial light, equal day and equal night. Two unsuitable fools and the beautiful possibility of it all.