“Are you all right?”
“I am,” he said. “More right than I’ve been in many, many years.” He put his hands on my face. “You are the bravest person I have ever known.”
“You aren’t so bad yourself,” I said with a grin, but Ethan’s expression stayed serious.
“What?” I asked, afraid for a moment that he’d been hurt or someone else had. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said, his thumb tracing a line across my cheek as he stared down at me. “I am precisely where I should be.”
And there, in the middle of the broken plaza, Ethan Sullivan went down on one knee. He stared up at me with eyes wide with love and pride and masculine satisfaction. He held out a hand, and I put my fingers in his palm.
The crowd of humans—thousands strong—who realized what he was doing roared with excitement. Cameras and cell phones began to flash around us.
“Holy shit!” I heard Mallory cry out somewhere behind us, but I couldn’t bring myself to look away from the warrior in front of me.
I put my free hand against my chest as if that would stop my throbbing heart from bursting through it. That didn’t stop the shaking of my fingers.
“You’re all right?” Ethan asked, glancing up at me with obvious amusement at my reaction. “I can stop if you’d like.”
I grinned at him. “No, you go ahead. I mean, you’re already down there.”
“Very well,” he said, and the crowd went silent as they strained to hear him.
“Caroline Evelyn Merit, you have changed my life completely. You’ve made it large and happier, and you have given me love and laughter. Perhaps most of all, you have reminded me what it means to be human. I’ve looked for four centuries to find you. I cannot fathom a world without you in it. Without your heart, and without your honor. Merit, my Sentinel and my love, will you marry me?”
He was stubborn and arrogant, domineering and imperious. He was brave and honorable, and he was mine. There was no one else. Had never really been anyone else, even before I knew he’d been waiting for me. And if I said yes, there would never be.
“Of course I will.”
The crowd erupted again with screams and hoots and applause as Ethan Sullivan, my former enemy, jumped to his feet and kissed me deeply, winding his hands into my hair.
“I love you,” he said, pulling back to gaze down at me. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.” I cleared my throat. “At the risk of asking an ungracious question . . . ,” I began, when he smiled down at me, and I smiled back.
“Don’t worry, Sentinel. There’s a ring. I just hadn’t anticipated there’d be a moment quite this perfect.” He let his gaze slip across the crowd that watched and cheered around us. “Or a location.”
Forever, he said silently, just for me. And for an eternity after that.
Forever, I agreed.
EPILOGUE
TROMPE L’OEIL
Green had been her signature color. Orange most definitely was not. But it was oh so satisfying to see Sorcha and Adrien Reed stripped of expensive clothes and jewelry.
Sorcha was now known as the “Chicago Witch,” and her treatment only slightly warmer than her ancestors’ treatment in Salem likely had been.
The raid of Reed’s office had been accidentally successful, at least after the fact. While there, a very nervous admin confessed to the CPD that Reed had moved computers and files into the Community Safety Center—the very outpost he’d created to coordinate public safety—only the week before. He’d probably thought no one would question files stored in a facility dedicated to the public welfare.
Once again, he’d underestimated us.
Nick Breckenridge had broken the story of Reed’s criminal involvement. The Reeds had been stripped of their friends, their positions, and the sycophantic devotion they believed they were entitled to. I’d grinned hugely at the photograph of the two of them in their ill-fitting jumpsuits, hair uncoiffed and Botox (or magic) fading, shuffling along with legs and hands chained together. Logan Hill had been behind them, looking decidedly unhappy about the turn of events.
The trio was now in the same prison that held Regan and Seth Tate and a handful of shifters. And since Seth was technically on our side, he promised they wouldn’t have access to magic for a very long time.
Robert was healing physically but had a long way to go emotionally. Rather than admitting he’d been played by the Reeds, he’d decided the story, the charges, the magic were part of a conspiracy. He was an intelligent man, and I had to hope he’d come around. But my father’s prejudices—which, ironically, he’d mostly grown out of—had infected Robert.