Her smile stretched wider despite the lump in her throat.
“Don’t worry, this isn’t the official moment,” he added. “I have a whole production planned. You know how I excel at performance.”
“Oh, I have no doubt. Will it involve magically multiplying floral arrangements?”
“Of course. At least a dozen varieties.”
“And dreadful poetry?”
“The very worst. I know how much it delights you.”
She let out a quiet laugh, and the sound seemed to soften something in him. He reached for her hand, his fingers entwining with hers as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “I mean it,” he said, his voice dropping to a husky timbre that sent warmth cascading through her veins. “I fully intend to go down on one knee, and I am fully prepared to do it right now, no flowers, no poetry, no pageantry?—”
“No.” She reached for his sleeve, fingers curling to stop him as he began to shift. “I find I rather like you exactly where you are. Lying right here beside me.”
He stilled, then leaned in a fraction closer, the ghost of a smile on his lips. “Mariselle Brightcrest,” he said in a low and scandalized tone, “how delightfully improper of you.”
“It’s what we’re known for, isn’t it?” she murmured, voice hushed.
They lay there for a long moment, breathing in the hush that had settled between them, hearts thrumming in time, fingers tracing slow, gentle patterns across each other’s palms.
“You scared me,” Evryn whispered, eyes never leaving hers. “You terrified me. No, you very nearly unmade me. I thought I might never see your beautiful smile again or hear your laugh.”
She shook her head, bit her lip, trying not to give in to the emotion that threatened to overwhelm her. “I’m so sorry. I should not have pushed myself that far. I couldn’t see how close I was to the edge until I was already falling. I was so desperate to finish. Desperate to …” She shrugged, her shoulder pressing into the mattress. “I wanted to achieve something of my own before my family takes possession of my magic.”
And speaking of her family …
“Evryn,” she whispered, her heart sinking as the terrible confrontation with her parents surfaced in her mind. Had she really allowed the dreamy haze of sleep to lull her into thinking that any of this could be possible? “My family will never?—”
“Your family will not be a problem.”
“Evryn, unless the very foundations of the earth have shifted beneath our feet since yesterday, nothing has changed to suggest that my parents might?—”
“Mariselle?”
The voice came from the next room, and Evryn scrambled off the bed so fast, Mariselle could have sworn it had caught fire beneath him. He knocked the chair over, caught it, righted it, then almost stumbled into the wall.
Mariselle sat up. “Was that … my grandmother?”
Before Evryn could answer, Lady Nirella Brightcrest herself appeared in the doorway, draped in a traveling cloak over what appeared to be a nightgown. Her hair—which Mariselle had never seen in anything but an impeccable arrangement—tumbled in disarray around her shoulders. Despite this unprecedented state of dishevelment, she carried herself with the same rigid posture she might display at a formal reception at Solstice Hall.
Her sharp eyes took in the scene—Mariselle sitting up on the bed, Evryn standing awkwardly by the wall as though he’d been magnetically propelled there—and her lips betrayed the faintest of quirks.
“I see Lord Rowanwood possesses the reflexes of a startled hare,” she remarked dryly. “How fortunate, as it spares me the effort of reminding him about proper distances between unmarried young people.”
“Grandmother,” Mariselle breathed, still struggling to reconcile this version of Lady Nirella with the immaculate figure she’d known all her life. “What are you doing here? How did you?—”
“I received an urgent message last night regarding your condition,” Lady Nirella replied, moving into the room. “Though I’m relieved to see you’ve recovered.” Her gaze slid to Evryn, who appeared to be attempting to blend into the wall. “No doubt thanks to the remedy that Venna—” She caught herself with a loud cough and immediately forged on. “That Lady Rivenna and I prepared.”
“Lady Rivenna?” Mariselle echoed, feeling as though she’d awakened in an entirely different reality than the one she’d left.
“Yes,” her grandmother confirmed, her tone suggesting this was merely a minor inconvenience rather than an earth-shattering development. “She is presently asleep on the window seat, while I managed a few hours on the sofa. Not the most comfortable arrangements, but needs must when dealing with magical exhaustion.”
Mariselle swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “I don’t understand. How did you both?—”
“It seems you and Lord Rowanwood agreed to fulfill the Dreamland restoration contract,” Lady Nirella cut in. “A fact I might have appreciated knowing before discovering you unconscious from magical depletion. I believe it is time for the two of us to return home—myhome, not Brightcrest Manor—where we may discuss the implications of this in private.”
Mariselle’s head spun with everything that was happening. Her limbs were still heavy from sleep, her mind still trying to reconcile the presence of both grandmothers in this cottage, and her heart still processing a proposal. Evryn Rowanwood wanted to marry her! And now she was simply expected to … leave?
