Chapter 37
Grandma Jo's garden is in bloom.
Every flower bed is overflowing. Roses the size of my fist climb the fence in thick, fragrant walls of red and pink and white.
The herb garden has gone feral: basil and rosemary and lavender growing waist-high, filling the air with a scent so strong it hits you at the gate.
The elm tree stands at the center of it all, massive and ancient, its canopy throwing shade across the yard in patterns that shift with the afternoon breeze.
"The flowers are doing that thing again," Leo says, standing on the back porch with a glass of sweet tea and the particular expression of a man who has learned to tolerate a certain amount of magical nonsense in his backyard. "The leaning thing. Toward you."
He's right. The roses along the fence are tilted in my direction, their stems curved slightly inward. They've been doing it since I arrived this morning. I stopped being unsettled by it around hour two.
"They're excited," I say.
"They're plants, Elle."
"They're excited plants."
He shakes his head and goes back inside, and Sarah catches my eye through the kitchen window and gives me a smile that says I married into this family knowing exactly what I was getting into.
The wedding is in three hours. I'm standing in Grandma Jo's garden in a pair of cutoff shorts and one of Leo's old t-shirts, and I'm getting married today.
I'm getting married today.
The thought keeps arriving like a wave I can't quite get in front of.
It washes over me, recedes, and washes over me again, and each time it lands I feel a little more of the reality of it settle into my chest. Not nerves.
Not doubt. Just the sheer, ridiculous weight of the fact that I dispersed myself across time, got reassembled by the stubbornness of a man who refused to let me stay lost, survived a walking Cathedral made from a version of that man's despair, and now I'm going to marry him in my dead grandmother's backyard in Arkansas while a beetle officiates.
My life is insane.
I wouldn't trade it for anything.
The preparations are a group effort, which means they are utter chaos.
Bryx has appointed himself head of decorations, a title nobody gave him and nobody can take away because he started hanging garlands before anyone was awake.
He's strung flowering vines between the fence posts and the elm tree, creating archways that glow faintly with residual Bloom magic, and he's arranged chairs in rows on either side of a root-woven aisle that Thalia grew this morning, a smooth, pale path that runs from the porch steps to the base of the elm.
"It needs more flowers," Bryx says, standing back to assess his work with the critical eye of someone who has opinions about event design and the complete lack of credentials to support them.
"There are already more flowers than guests," Mora says beside him.
"There can never be too many flowers at a wedding. That's a universal law. Kevin, back me up."
Kevin buzzes enthusiastically, his fuzzy body draped in a garland of white roses that Bryx made for him. He looks like the world's most earnest, most heavily pollinated ring bearer.
"Kevin is wearing a flower crown," Mora observes.
"Kevin is the flower boy. Every wedding needs a flower boy. He's been practicing his processional buzz all morning."
"He buzzed into the screen door twice."
"Practice makes perfect."
Sarnyx is in charge of security, because of course she is. She's positioned herself at the garden gate with her thorns retracted and her arms folded, surveying each arrival with the focused attention of someone who has never attended a social event without running a threat assessment first.
"Sarnyx," I say, passing her on my way inside. "It's a wedding. In a backyard. In Arkansas."
"All events require a security perimeter."
"From what?"
"Unknowns."
"The biggest unknown in this neighborhood is whether Mr. Henderson's cat is going to get into the garden again."
"Then I will handle Mr. Henderson's cat." She says this with the same tone she uses for tactical briefings, and I know she means it.
Vashael has taken over the kitchen. She arrived an hour ago with Nimor and immediately began preparing something she calls "traditional fae wedding nectar," which involves flowers I've never seen, a mortar and pestle the size of a mixing bowl, and a concentration so intense that Leo backed out of the kitchen slowly and hasn't returned.
"Is it alcoholic?" I ask, peering into the bowl.
"It is celebratory," Vashael says, which is not an answer.
"It smells like it could strip paint," Sarah says from behind her.
"It will be transcendent," Vashael corrects. "And yes, mildly alcoholic. Do not give any to the gnome."
Raskel, who is in the garden replanting a flower bed he deemed insufficiently arranged, hears this and shouts something through the window that is anatomically specific and physically impossible.
Eltrien has been in the garden since sunrise, running diagnostics on the Elm Gate.
He wants to make sure the passage between realms remains stable for the guests who will need to return to Wynmire after the ceremony.
He also wants to make sure Raskel has done nothing to the tree's root system, which is a valid concern given that Raskel has been "improving" the garden's drainage for the past week with a vigor that borders on aggressive.
Thalia arrived through the Elm Gate this morning.
She stepped through the shimmer between worlds into her grandmother's backyard for the first time, and she stood there for a full minute, not moving, looking at the porch and the wind chimes and the house all as it had been described to her for years.
She didn't cry. But she touched the ceramic frog with one finger, gently, and said, "Smaller than I imagined."
She's wearing a beautiful violet gown that turns the heads of everyone present. She flashes a brilliant smile at me, then wraps me in a hug. "Let's watch my parents get married!" she shouts to the crowd. Everyone cheers.
I love her so much that my chest hurts.
The dress is white.
Not the Verdance's prismatic shimmer. Simple white.
Cotton. Fitted through the bodice, loose through the skirt, with thin straps and a hem that falls just above the grass.
Sarah found it at a shop three days ago, and when I put it on, I cried because it looks exactly like the kind of dress Grandma Jo would have picked.
Sarah does my hair. Simple, loose, with a few small flowers tucked behind my ear that I grew myself without meaning to. My marks glow faintly through the thin fabric at my shoulders, golden lines visible in the afternoon light.
Mora helps with the last adjustments, her steady hands pinning a loose strap, smoothing a crease. She's quiet, but when she steps back and looks at me, her eyes go bright.
"Elle."
That's all she says.
"Don't you dare make me cry before I get out there."
"You look like someone who has earned this."
That does it. I hug her, and she holds on as we stand in Grandma Jo's bedroom for a moment.
"Okay," I say, pulling back. "Let's do this before I ruin my face."
"Too late," Peeble says from the windowsill. "Your mascara is already compromised. But don't worry. Nobody's going to be looking at your face."
"Excuse me?"
"They're going to be looking at me. I am the officiant. I am wearing a custom-fitted garland handcrafted by Bryx, and my shell has been polished to a high shine. I am the main event."
"Peeble, this is my wedding."
"Technically, it's my ceremony. You and Kaelren are just the props."
The afternoon sun filters through the canopy, throwing patterns of light and shadow across the root-woven aisle.
The chairs are full. Leo sits in the front row beside Sarah, and he's already crying.
He started when he saw me come through the back door, and he hasn't stopped, and Sarah is holding his hand and looking at him with tender exasperation.
Thalia stands to the right of the elm, hands folded in front of her, gown catching the leaf-filtered light. She's watching me walk down the aisle with an expression of love and the fierce, quiet pride of someone seeing exactly what they hoped for.
Sarnyx stands behind Thalia, thorns retracted, posture rigid, eyes scanning the perimeter even now. When I pass her, she gives me a nod. One nod. It contains everything.
Bryx is in the second row, Kevin on his shoulder, both of them draped in so many flowers they look like a parade float. Bryx catches my eye and mouths the word "gorgeous" with such theatrical sincerity that I nearly laugh.
Vashael and Nimor sit together, her hand in his, her skin luminous in the afternoon light. Eltrien sits beside them with a satisfied smile on his face.
Raskel is on a stack of books in the back row, his stick across his knees, his tiny face set in an expression that is attempting to be grumpy and failing.
And at the end of the aisle, under the elm tree—
Kaelren.
He's wearing black, and he looks devastating in it. The shirt is fitted and open at the collar, showing the corruption marks that trace his throat. His dark hair is loose. His silver eyes find mine the moment I step onto the aisle, and they don't leave.
He watches me walk toward him with the same expression he wore in the Verdance plaza when he first saw me in the festival dress. Like the air has been taken from his lungs. Like the world has narrowed to one person and everything else is noise.
I reach him. He takes my hands. His fingers close around mine, warm and steady, and the contact sends a pulse through my marks that makes the flowers along the aisle brighten.
"You grew the aisle flowers," he says quietly.
"I can't help it. They respond to strong emotion."
"Then the garden is about to have a very productive afternoon."