W e didn’t know how long we had before one, or both, of our enemies would be at our shores. Max commanded that barricades be set up as
quickly as possible several miles offshore in all directions, so hopefully we would get some form of warning once Nura or Caduan make their move. The Wielders built Stratagram networks to facilitate the quick movement of forces—imperfect, but we had to take imperfect. We no longer had the numbers of the Roseteeth Company behind us. We needed to make the most of the forces we did have.
I wrote to Serel and Riasha urgently and asked them for the Alliance’s help, whatever they could spare in their own shaky state. I did not know how many that would be. Perhaps I could pretend it would be enough to stave off both Nura and the Fey.
We had so little time and so much to do. It seemed like we could prepare for an age for this encounter, and it still wouldn’t be enough. Eventually, after the latest hour of endless strategy meetings, Iya set down his pen.
“I think there is little more we can do,” he said.
I didn’t know how he could even say that. There was always something more that we could do.
He added, as if already seeing my protest rising before I opened my mouth, “Get some rest. None of us will be doing anyone any good if we’re walking corpses ourselves.”
Every muscle in me screamed against it, but I had to admit he had a point.
So Max and I returned to the room we had been given in the Palace. It was some guest chamber that we had made into a makeshift base of operations—one part study, one part strategy hub, one part military base. When we arrived, it had been neat and elegant. Now it had been hit with a tornado of ink and parchments.
Max sloppily attempted to clear a pile of paper from the bed, mostly failed, and flopped down on it anyway like a marionette with broken strings. He held out a beckoning hand, as if words were simply too much for him.
I approached the bed but didn’t lie down with him. He looked so tired that I reconsidered whether this was the right time for this conversation.
But then again, if I let this opportunity pass, we might not have another one.
“I have something I want to give you,” I said.
He opened one eye. “I’m amazed you’re in a gift-giving mood after all of this.”
I went to my bag—the one thing that had been salvaged from the Towers—and rummaged through it. Most of my possessions had been destroyed. But this, the most important one, had made it out mostly intact. It seemed like a miracle.
Max sat up, and I handed him the scorched piece of canvas.
He stared down at it in silence for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough. “How— how did you get this?”
“It was not easy. No one should have to work so hard to get something so ugly.”
He let out a strangled laugh.
The painting was, indeed, truly awful. It depicted a very rotund, very naked woman with fair hair, reclining awkwardly on a stone bench in a garden of pink and red roses. The artist had not been particularly talented, the figure flat and oddly proportioned, the colors garishly bright.
But Max had been right—ugly as it was, this picture had been rendered with deep, reverent love. I could see it dripping off the paint just as Max could when he wept in that cafe all those years ago.
The night I let myself fall into my feelings for him, Max had sat with me under the moonlight over the Threllian plains and told me of these paintings. How he had been in a dark place when he saw them, and how they had reminded him that even in the most terrible moments, someone,
somewhere, was happy. They had reminded him of the existence of hope. Now, in another dark time, I could feel it here, too.
I had managed to find only this one small painting, just the canvas without its original frame. It was slightly damaged, one side singed from the explosion. Yet, Max held it as if it were a priceless treasure.
I sat beside him, our shoulders touching. “That night in the cottage, before everything happened, you asked if I ever imagined a future together. I couldn’t answer then. But every moment you were trapped in that awful place, I thought about that night and what I left unsaid. I regretted it more than anything.”
“Tisaanah, I never thought—”
I gripped his hand tightly. “The truth I couldn’t share then was that I’ve never wanted anything more. It was true when you asked, it’s true now, and it will be true tomorrow.”
Max looked at me as if nothing else mattered. Despite everything we’d been through, and all the vulnerabilities I’d shown him, I had to resist the urge to look away. Such raw vulnerability was terrifying.
“You are my home, Max. I never let myself believe I could have one, or keep one if I did. But I’ve realized there’s courage in hoping for the future. And I—”
Max’s kiss, sudden and passionate, swallowed the rest of my words. The taste of him, the scent of him, made them seem so much less important
—made them seem utterly inconsequential.
When we parted, our foreheads pressed together, he murmured, “You cannot possibly understand how much I love you.”
I absolutely do, actually, I wanted to say, but instead I said, “Marry me.”
A stunned pause.
“Say that again,” he whispered. “Marry me, mysterious snake man.”
His arms wound around me, pulling me onto his lap, and he kissed me again, and again, and again, until finally we untangled ourselves from each other long enough for him to look into my eyes and say, “Well, I guess so.”
