The Winter Long

He inclined his head. “I appreciate that. I was . . . quite concerned. My fear caused me to realize that there was something I had neglected to ask you.”


I frowned, sitting up the rest of the way. He moved with me, until we were both sitting on the bed, disheveled and tangled up in sheets. “What?”

“October Christine Daye—my dearest little fish—you are probably going to die horribly one day in the process of doing something you feel is absolutely necessary, and can be done by no one else. Given that this limits our time together in a way that is quite unfair, I feel that patience has ceased to be a virtue, and has instead become an indulgence. I dislike indulgences. They have their place upon the stage, but all they really do past a certain point is pad the scene.”

My frown deepened. “You’re being flowery again, Tybalt. You know it’s a little hard for my non-Shakespearean-era brain to follow you when you do that, right?”

“I do. But some questions are difficult for me to frame without becoming somewhat, ah, ‘flowery.’” Tybalt sighed, running a hand through his hair and putting his stripes into brief disarray. “I am aware that my position is a difficulty. I believe it is one we can work around if we are so motivated, and I am more than motivated. And so . . . October, will you marry me?”

I blinked. I blinked again. And then, slowly, without any conscious intent, I began to smile. The smile grew until my lips hurt. Tybalt was watching me anxiously. It occurred to me that I should probably say something before he really started to freak out.

“Yes,” I said, in a small voice.

Tybalt blinked. Then he started smiling, too. “Yes?”

“Yes. I’ll marry you. Yes.” I laughed disbelievingly. “I . . . yes.”

“Yes!” Tybalt pounced on me, driving me back down into the blankets. I wrapped my arms around him. He kissed me, and I kissed him back, and everything else in the world ceased to matter, at least for a little while. Maybe I had lost the family I’d counted on when I was a child; maybe Sylvester wasn’t the man I’d always thought he was, maybe Evening was my enemy, maybe Luna and I would never make peace with each other. All of that was terrible, and yet I wouldn’t have taken back what I had if I’d somehow been granted the power. I was building something better.

I was building something real.