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Summary
Damen steals Nikandros' thunder.
"I’m going to ride home tomorrow and begin preparations to ask for her hand,” Nikandros says, and Laurent smiles wider and says, “Oh, wonderful,” as Damen leaps to his feet with a thundering crash of chair against flagstone.
“Nikandros!” he shouts, papers flying, arms wide, “This— amazing! She sounds amazing! Congratulations!”
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Bookmark Notes:
“Will you—” and finally Damen’s nerve seems to run dry, leaving him flushed again, a little breathless, smiling with one corner of his mouth,”—would you marry me?”
And then he waits.
Nikandros has never seen Laurent look like this.
He isn't sure how to put the sight into words, how to frame it in terms he can himself understand. Laurent is flushed, yes, his mouth half-open, his eyes wide. But the manner in which he looks at Damen, the shape of that light in his eyes, is beyond Nikandros somehow, and Nikandros’ knowledge of him.
Damen is staring right back. His hands are very faintly shaking.
Nikandros is trapped in this whether he likes it or not.
He remembers when they got drunk.
Well over a year ago, maybe a month after Laurent’s Ascension. Damen had spent all day arguing issues of sovereignty with the kyroi. Nikandros had rewarded him with several cups of strong wine and a willingness to wave off anyone who’d tried to disturb them as they sat on Damen’s balcony and laughed louder and louder at their own jokes. And some time before midnight Damen had mentioned, offhand, like it was obvious, that it was Laurent who proposed the alliance and Damen who had said yes.
You did what? Nikandros had shouted, voice perhaps a bit high, as Damen had slapped his thigh and laughed and spilled his wine. Somehow the thought that the whole cursed thing was born of Damen’s mind had been easier to stomach. Of course Damen would unite two warring nations so he could fuck a blond. It had seemed simple.
But all this, Nikandros had said, I know you care for him, but all of this— the kyroi, the unrest, the threats of secession— you must have known it would come. It wasn’t even your idea. How could you say yes?
It was a question Nikandros had asked before, in tones both joking and serious. Damen may even, in the past, have answered him. But still Damen had grinned, flushed with wine and love, and said, Oh, but you should have seen him.
The night had been clear, the stars shining. Damen’s half-full cup had held the image of the moon.
And he’s the smartest person I know, Nikandros, Damen had said, as if he had not said it before, the absolute smartest, he runs circles around me every day, but when I said yes, and now his eyes were sparkling, like the wine, like the night, it was such a simple question, and when I said yes— you should have seen him. It was like he’d never known the sky before, or the ocean, or the trees, or, or the rocks, and I held all the world in my hands. And I was giving it to him.
The light in the study is warm as honey.
Damen and Laurent gaze at each other. They hold the world between them.
Laurent says, “Yes.”
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