“Is this guy serious?” Winston calls back, exasperated. “It’s been maybe five minutes.”
“Sprinting two miles—uphill, in the heat, in a suit—and he doesn’t break a sweat,” Kenji says. “Wouldn’t even let me rest for thirty-seconds. But this—yeah, this is too much for him. Makes sense.”
“Okay, you can ignore them,” Ella says, taking my hand again. “We’re pretty close now.” I feel her enthusiasm building anew, her eyes brightening as she peers ahead.
“So—what changed yesterday?” I ask her. “To make all this happen?”
Ella looks up. “What do you mean?”
“Yesterday Nouria told me that, for a number of different reasons, it was basically out of the question for us to have a wedding. But today”—I glance around us, at the mass of people sacrificing hours of their work and life to help organize this event—“those issues no longer seem to be relevant.”
“Oh,” Ella says, and sighs. “Yeah. Yesterday was a mess. I really didn’t want to postpone things, but there were just so many different disasters to deal with. Losing our clothes was one obstacle, but trying to host the wedding at night was proving a logistical nightmare. I realized we could either get married last night and have to compromise on almost everything, or push it by a day, and maybe, just maybe, be able to do it right—”
“A day?” I frown. “Nouria made it seem like it might be months before we could reschedule. She made it sound functionally impossible.”
“Months?” Ella stiffens. “Why would she say that?”
“You must’ve really pissed her off,” Kenji says, his laughter echoing. “Nouria knew Juliette wouldn’t have postponed the wedding that long. She was probably just torturing you.”
“Really.” The revelation makes me scowl. Between her and Sam, I seem to have made two very powerful enemies.
“Hey—I’m sorry she said that to you,” Ella says softly, hugging me from the side as we walk. I wrap my arm around her shoulders, holding her tight against me.
“I think Nouria leaned a little too hard into the cover story,” she says. “I had no idea you thought we might be postponing the wedding that far into the future. I’m only now realizing that yesterday must’ve been pretty rough for you.”
“It wasn’t,” I lie, gently cupping the back of her head, my fingers threading through the silk of her hair. I study her face as she stares up at me, noticing then how the sun changes her eyes; her irises look more green in the light. Blue in the dark. “It was fine.”
Ella doesn’t buy this.
Her hands graze my hips as she draws away, lingering before she lets go. “I was so busy trying to make everything work that I didn’t even—”
She cuts herself off, her emotions changing without warning.
“Hey,” she says. “What’s this?”
“What’s what?”
“This,” she says, gently prodding my pant leg in a manner that would disturb Kenji for weeks. “This box.”
“Oh.”
I come to a sudden and complete stop, heart pounding as the crowd surges around us, several of them calling out congratulations as they pass. Someone sticks a homemade tiara on Ella’s head at one point, which she accepts with a gracious nod before discreetly tugging it out of her hair.
They seem to know better than to touch me.
In the distance, I hear Winston clap his hands. “All right, everyone, we’re basically here. Juliette, will you and Warner pl— Wait, where’s Juliette?”
“I’m back here!”
“Why the hell are you back there?” Kenji cries.
I hear faint grumbling from Winston, more exasperated words from Kenji; all this is followed by soothing sounds made by their partners. The sequence would be comical if I were in any mood to laugh.
Instead, I have turned to stone.
“We’ll be right there!” Ella reassures them. “You can start setting up without us!”
“Set up without you? If I find out this was your plan all along, princess, Nazeera is going to kick your ass.”
“I absolutely won’t,” she calls out cheerfully. “In fact, I fully support the two of you tearing off each other’s clothes, if that’s what you’ve got planned!”
“Oh my God, Nazeera—”
“What?”
“Don’t encourage them,” Kenji and Winston shout at the same time.
“Why not?” Brendan says. “I think it’s romantic.”
They bicker a bit more while my mind spins. I feel the outline of the box against my leg more acutely than ever, a square spot of heat against my skin.
This is happening out of order.
I manage to comfort myself with the reminder that everything about us has unfolded in an unconventional way; I shouldn’t be too surprised to discover that, here, too, things are not going to plan.
Then again, I didn’t really have a plan.
In an ideal scenario, I would’ve proposed to her with the ring; she should’ve already had it on her finger. Instead, we are now fast approaching our actual wedding and I’ve yet to give it to her. And while it occurs to me that I could find a way to evade her curiosity right now, I’m not sure there’s any point in prolonging it. I have no idea where we’re going. I don’t know what’s going to happen next.
I might not even have time later to do this properly.
I swallow, hard, trying to force back my apprehension. I don’t know why I’m so nervous.
That’s not true.
I know why I’m nervous. I’m worried she’s going to hate it, and I don’t know what I’ll do if she hates it. I suppose I’ll have to return it. I’ll have to marry her without a ring, acknowledging all the while that I am an idiot of astronomical proportions, one who couldn’t even manage to pick out a decent ring for his fiancée.
This imagining inspires in me a wave of dread so severe I close my eyes against the force of it.
“Aaron,” Ella says, and my eyes fly open, bringing me back to the present.
She is smiling at me.
Ella, I realize, already knows what’s in the box.
Somehow, this makes me more nervous. I look around myself, searching for calm, and register a beat too late that we’re all alone. The crowd has dispersed into the distance beyond us, and as I watch them disappear—their bodies growing smaller by the second—I recognize only then that I have no idea where we are.
I take stock of our surroundings: there are paved roads and sidewalks not far away, wilting trees planted at regular intervals. The air smells different—sharper—and the sun seems brighter, unencumbered by dense woods. I hear that familiar trill of birdsong and search the sky again, trying to orient myself. My mind searches itself for maps, blueprints, old information. This area looks less wild than the Sanctuary, stripped back. I feel quite certain we must be encroaching upon old, unregulated territory, but as we still appear to be within the boundary of Nouria’s protections, that can’t be possible. The lights that delineate our space from the outside world are clearly visible.
“Where are we?” I ask. For a moment, my nerves are forgotten. “This isn’t—”
“We can get to that in just a second,” Ella says, still smiling. She drops the homemade tiara to the ground and steps forward, drawing her hand slowly up my thigh, tracing a faint circle around the impression of the box. “But first, I feel like I have no choice but to make a terrible joke about finding something hard in your pants.”
I drag a hand down my face, vaguely mortified. “Please don’t.”
Ella fights to be serious, biting her lip to keep from smiling. She mimes locking her mouth, tossing the key.
I actually laugh then, after which I sigh, staring for a moment into the distance.
“So. What’s in the box?” she asks, her joy so bright it’s blinding. “Is it for me?”
“Yes.”
When I make no move to procure the object, she frowns.
“Can I . . . have it?”
With great reluctance, I tug free the little velvet box from my pocket, clenching it tight for so long she finally reaches for my hand. Gently, she wraps her small fingers around my fist.
“Aaron,” she says. “What’s wrong?”