by Laura Legend
He paused again, obviously revisiting this image of Rose’s self-effacing, intelligent, open-hearted beauty. He rubbed wearily at the corner of his eye.
“By the time I knew your mother, I discovered I was already in love with her. And the better I knew her, the more I loved her. She snuck up on me and, in the end, left me defenseless. One morning, we were walking together to the library and, with the sun in her hair, I realized that I’d already loved her for months. At the same time, I realized with a kind of panic that I couldn’t imagine not seeing her every day for the rest of my life. I took her hand and pulled her to the side of the path—I didn’t even have a ring! We hadn’t even gone on a real date!—and I asked her then and there to marry me. She looked me in the eye, smiled in a way that made my heart skip a beat, and kissed me. ‘Of course,’ she said, taking my hand. And then we walked the rest of the way to the library.”
Cass smiled and looked up from her coffee. Her father met her gaze.
“And that was that. And then there was you.”
And my brother, she added in her head.
“And everything changed.”
Cass stood up and began to tour the kitchen, looking at the knick-knacks from her childhood still scattered around the room.
In response to her father’s story, she felt something solidifying inside of her, a calm sense of purpose and direction, a clarity about what she needed to do.
She gave the feelings space to fuse and settle.
All the dish towels were new, but some of the doilies were the same. The small ceramic cat on the window sill was the same. The cookie jar was the same.
She leaned against the sink and looked out the window into the tiny backyard and toward the garage.
Next to the sink, she found a small jewelry box that had been there for as long as Cass could remember. It contained a smattering of old jewelry and, whenever her mother had done the dishes, she would remove her wedding ring and place it inside for safe keeping.
Gary followed Cass’s gaze, guessing at what she was thinking.
“Your mother’s ring is still with her,” her father said. “But there may be something else in there for you, if you need it.”
Cass opened the jewelry box. Its lid was stiff from so little use. Inside, she found a handful of her mother’s earrings—a pair of flowers, two silver hoops, some pearls—and a wedding band.
Cass left the earrings and picked out the wedding band.
“I never knew what to do with that ring,” her father admitted, “so I left it there, in plain sight. It was your grandfather’s—my father’s—wedding band. He wore that ring every day for sixty years until he died. My mother gave it to me before she passed. She wanted it to be worn again.”
The band was a plain gold and bore a lifetime’s worth of subtle dings and scratches.
Cass held the ordinary band up to the light: there was nothing flashy or aristocratic about this ring. She felt the weight of it resting in the palm of her hand, comforting and substantial.
“It’s yours, if you want it. If you’re ready for it,” her father added.
Cass squeezed the ring tight in the palm of her hand and then squeezed her father even tighter.
“Thanks, Dad,” she said. “I know what to do.”
9
BACK AT THE monastery, Cass found Richard alone on top of the compound wall. It was late but, given the time change, not ridiculously so. From ground level in the courtyard, he looked inevitably dashing—as any vampire worth his salt should—brooding on the ramparts in the light of a full moon.
She wasn’t surprised to find him alone. As the leader of a major faction of the Turned, he was only grudgingly tolerated by members of the Shield. No one was looking to share his company and take him out for a beer. They were just waiting for him to leave.
She squeezed her grandfather’s ring in her hand and then pressed it, warm and sweaty, into the front pocket of her jeans.
A late winter wind was blowing off the mountain. Cass zipped up her jacket and tucked her chin down into the collar of her coat. She patted her front pants pocket, checking for the ring, then climbed the stairs onto the wall.
At night, Richard always looked more like himself than he did during the day. He stood a little taller, his back a little straighter, his bearing a bit more at home in the darkness. His suit coat was open, his hands in his pants pockets, a fashionable scarf tied around his neck. He didn’t appear to be bothered by the cold.
“Hey,” Cass said, joining him.
“Hey,” Richard echoed, smiling shyly, still a bit embarrassed. It was, to say the least, profoundly out of character for him to expose his heart as he’d done this morning.
Cass leaned against the ramparts, looking up at the moon. Richard followed suit, leaning conspiratorially close.
“This is an especially beautiful full moon,” he said, “and I’ve seen thousands.”
Every tree in the forest was edged in silver, sharply defined with an uncanny clarity by the pale moon light.
“Does a full moon change you?” Cass asked, only half in jest. “Do you grow hair out of your ears, or feel the urge to bark, or find yourself compelled, against your own better judgment, to run naked through the woods?”
Richard gave her a sidelong look and raised an eyebrow.
Cass continued. “Given the world as you and I know it, there’s gotta be something to all those stories about werewolves.”
“I confess,” Richard said, “that I do on occasion, when the moon is full, feel a kind of wildness growing in me.”
Cass turned to him, her eyes wide in playful shock.
“Tell me more,” she prompted.
“Rather than baying at the moon, though, I sometimes find myself moved to propose marriage.”
Cass laughed out loud at this, then, immediately, felt bad.
Richard saw the stricken look on her face and intervened.
“It was joke,” he said. “The werewolf part, not the proposal part. I wanted to make you laugh and I’m glad you did. My feelings have been tempered enough by time that, these days, I’m slow to take offense. Besides, there are few things more beautiful in the world than a beautiful woman laughing in the moonlight.”
Cass felt a deep blush creeping up her neck. She reached out and squeezed Richard’s hand.
“Thank you, Richard.”
Richard frowned a tight frown in response, feeling the ground of their conversation tilt under his feet.
“Thank you,” he repeated, “but . . .?”
Cass reached into her front pocket and felt the ring still burning against her thigh. She turned to face him and pressed her other hand against his chest. She listened for a moment in silence. She could still feel his heart beating, faint and irregular.
“I’m grateful for your heart. I’m grateful that, after all these years, you can feel it beating again. And I’m grateful that, in some measure, you feel like your heart is beating for me.”
Richard covered her hand with his own, bracing himself.
“But I can’t marry you,” she said quietly.
Richard had been holding his breath despite himself. He let it out now with a slow sigh.
“When I press my hand to your chest, I can hear your heart beating. And we’re connected in a way that I hope will never be broken. But my own heart doesn’t belong to me. It already belongs to Zach. And, in a weird way, I’m especially grateful for your proposal today because it forced me to wake up to the fact that this has already been true for a while. I’d already given my heart away to him.”
Richard nodded stoically.
He pulled her close and folded her tightly in his arms against the wind, then whispered into her ear.
“Allow me, then, to offer my blessing. I wish you the deepest and truest kind of happiness. And regardless of how many more lives I may live, know that my feelings for you will never change.”
Through a wave of involuntary goosebumps, Cass pressed her head against his chest, un
sure of what to say in response. Then her weak eye slipped into focus and she saw through to the heart of the situation. And she knew what to do with Richard. Whatever happened next, she couldn’t allow their friendship to end.
Cass let go of Richard and took a step back. Then she spat in the palm of her hand and held it out for Richard to shake.
“Let’s promise,” Cass said solemnly, “that no matter what happens, our friendship will never come to an end. Let’s promise, on the strength of a secret handshake whose solemnity cannot be violated, that when one of us calls, the other will always come.”
He smiled, spat in his own hand, then took Cass’s and—following the pattern of some ancient ritual that he, clearly, already knew by heart—sealed the pact.
“It is done,” he said. “The promised cannot be broken. We are bound.”
Cass smiled, their hands still intertwined.
“Now, before I go,” Richard said, “show me what you have in your other hand.”
Cass opened her other hand and showed him her grandfather’s ring.
Richard gave her a long look, somehow both warm and piercing. Finally, he appeared to make up his mind. “Excellent,” he said as the ring burned white in the moonlight. “Now go and find him.”
And Cass went.
10
IT WAS LATE enough at night—or early enough in the morning—that Cass looked first for Zach in his room. But he wasn’t there.
She lingered for a minute in his doorway anyway. All of his things were neatly put away. The books on the desk were color-coded. His bed was still made. His coat was hanging from its peg on the back of the door. The room didn’t smell like expensive cologne. It just smelled like Zach. But she liked this smell, too. His room was slightly larger than her own.
On his desk, she found a dusty old book, at least eighteenth century, left open to a pair of passages that detailed the dire consequences of using relics and magic to alter your own body. Cass thought of the guy with fours arms that she’d fought in the tournament, and shivered. Why was Zach interested in this?
Cass, though, had other fish to fry at the moment. She bit her lip, tried to think where he might have gone, and shut the door quietly behind her.
In the hallway, she bumped into Dogen. However, given that Dogen filled most of the hallway, this wasn’t really avoidable.
“Richard has left,” Dogen said, trying to scrunch against the opposite wall and make room for Cass to pass by. His tone was politely neutral, but Cass heard a note of relief.
“I know,” she said.
Dogen, in turn, tried to read between the lines of Cass’s response. The waters were too muddy, though.
Cass could tell that, regardless of his doubts about Richard, Dogen didn’t have any doubts about her. He was on her side. And, more, it was clear to her that if Dogen ever got the impression that Richard had broken Cass’s heart, he would be more than willing to track him down and break his in turn. Literally.
“It’s fine, big guy. It’s good. We’ll see him again soon.”
Dogen seemed willing to accept this. For now.
“Have you seen Zach anywhere?”
“Sorry,” Dogen said. “I haven’t seen him since breakfast.”
Cass crossed through the courtyard but didn’t see him there. She visited the monastery’s library where they’d lost Miranda and found it empty, too. She even checked the assembly hall, but the lights were out and the hall was silent.
Cass was starting to feel a little worried. This couldn’t have been an easy day for Zach. She hadn’t told him why she needed to visit her dad. She wouldn’t have known where to start until she knew for sure how she felt. But waiting around all day, not knowing what was happening, with Richard lurking, must have been excruciating for him.
Cass wasn’t sure, though, where else to look. In the end, she decided to just head back to her own room. Her adrenaline was starting to wane in the face of a growing weariness. She was running out of steam.
She shuffled back to her room, a bit disappointed not to find Zach. She leaned against her door, rested her forehead against the grain of the wood, and thumbed the ring in her pocket.
The simplicity of the door reminded her of the Underside door she’d once taken into Zach’s own mind. She had literally been inside of his head. And, in addition to what she’d learned there about Zach, she’d also a found a piece of herself. Without any words or walls or defenses to protect him, Cass had seen the truth about Zach—and the truth was that he loved her. Unlocking that door into his mind had unlocked the door into her own. And it had grounded her again, for the first time in more than decade, in a firsthand exposure to her own feelings and emotions.
Their minds were intertwined.
Cass reached for the door handle and let herself into her room. In the dark, she placed the ring on her dresser, shucked her shirt and bra and jeans, pulled on some pajamas, and tried to slip into bed.
There wasn’t any room, though.
Zach was already asleep there, waiting for her.
“Cass?” he said sleepily, reaching for her.
“Yeah,” Cass said, squeezing in under his arm. “It’s me.”
Cass pressed up against him, pulling his arm tight around her.
“Mmmm,” Zach said.
“Zach?”
“Yeah.”
“I love you.”
Zach was awake now. He switched on the lamp next to the bed and turned Cass toward him. He kissed her deeply. The kiss was a tender mix of emotions, equal parts passion and relief. Part of him hadn’t believed she was coming back.
“I love you, Cass. I always have. I always will.”
Cass slipped her hand under Zach’s shirt and pressed her hand against his chest. She felt him wince a little when her fingers brushed his nipple, but she was feeling for his heartbeat.
Like her own, it was clear and strong.
“Close your eyes,” Cass said.
Zach obediently scrunched them shut.
“Can you guess what I’ve got in my hand?” she asked, her hand still pressed against his chest, still listening intently to his heart.
“Me?”
Cass laughed.
“Good guess. Now keep your eyes closed.”
She reached over her shoulder for her grandfather’s wedding band.
She held it tight in her fist, then closed Zach’s hand around her own.
“Can you guess what I’ve got in my other hand?”
Zach swallowed hard and then, his voice cracking a little, guessed: “Richard?”
“Wrong,” Cass said, punching him in the arm.
“Sorry, sorry,” Zach said, laughing.
Zach pressed his free hand against Cass’s chest, feeling her heartbeat.
“You?” he whispered, hopefully.
“Bingo,” she said, opening her hand like a flower.
She felt Zach’s heart skip a beat when he saw the ring. And she felt it skip again when she put it on his finger.
11
THERE WAS NO hope of sleep now. Cass felt as wide awake as she’d ever been. She traced the outline of Zach’s jaw with her finger; Zach caught her wrist and pulled her impossibly closer until she began to lose the sense of where her body ended and his began. Cass bit her lip, impatient and wholly content at the same time. Zach leaned back suddenly, eyes held fast to her own gaze.
About that time, they spilled off the other side of the bed. Through laughter (and a few slight curses), they finally untangled themselves and stood up, restless.
Finally, they pulled on shoes and coats and left the compound a few hours before sunrise. Instead of following a trail up the side of the mountain, they walked through the grassy plains of the valley, hand in hand, talking and planning.
Cass recounted the proposal, her visit with her father, and how she’d left things with Richard.
Zach explained what a miserable day he’d had, walking around in a gray haze, not knowing if he’d lost her. He’d tried to study. He
’d tried to train. He’d train to eat. He couldn’t manage any of it. He wandered around the compound until, in the end, he did the only thing that felt right to him: he trusted her. Once he’d made that decision, he stole into her room and, without any hope of resting, fell asleep on her bed.
The purple edge of dawn was beginning to glow on the far side of the valley. They stopped in an open field and lay down in the grass, looking upward. The night sky, though fading, was still crowded with stars.
“I’m sorry I don’t have anything for you,” Zach said. He spun the ring on his finger in a slow circle. The fit was a little tight, but his finger hadn’t turned blue yet and, at least, the ring definitely wasn’t going to accidentally fall off.
Cass watched him spin the ring.
“We can get it sized,” she offered.
Zach held his left hand protectively against his chest. “If you think I’m ever taking this ring off again, you’re crazy.”
Cass smiled.
“As long as your finger doesn’t fall off, I can live with that.”
Zach plucked a blade of grass and chewed on it. Then, he had an idea. He rolled over onto his stomach, plucked several additional blades of grass, and began weaving them together, pulling them tight.
“Give me your hand,” he said.
Cass held out her hand, her thin fingers splayed.
Zach tied the weave of grass around her ring finger and then squeezed his eyes shut. He whispered a spell under his breath and the grass ring began to glow green. It still looked like grass but, on Cass’s finger, it now had the weight and solidity of metal.
“That should do for now,” he said.
Cass held up her hand against the breaking light and admired it.
“We won’t be able to hide the fact that we’re wearing a pair of rings,” Cass said, reflecting on what needed to be done in the short term.
“It would be terrible if we had to,” Zach noted.
Cass chewed on that for a minute, her hands folded across her chest, watching the sky turn from purple to orange on the horizon.
“Agreed. We’ll be forced to tell everyone. But—everyone also includes Kumiko.”