Chapter 341: I Am Going To Fix This. Let Me.
Atlas rose from his seat.
"Remove her."
Guards moved.
"And let me be clear." Atlas’s voice carried over the sound of the woman’s protests as she was escorted toward the exit. "Anyone else with a problem can leave. Voluntarily, or otherwise. No one else will disrespect my daughter today. That is a courtesy I am extending once. I will spend it on the next person who opens their mouth."
Nobody opened their mouth.
The courtyard was silent. The sea filled the gap. River stood at the altar with her new husband’s hand in hers and her eyes burning and her chin lifted, because River Aelindor had survived worse than this.
The celebration was held in the great hall. Music, food, wine, laughter that was slightly too loud and slightly too deliberate, the particular energy of a gathering trying to will normalcy into existence after a ceremony that would be discussed in whispers for the next century.
River was present. She danced with Tristan. She accepted congratulations with grace. She smiled at the right moments and spoke at the right volume and performed the role of a bride with the discipline of a woman who had spent her entire life learning to hold composure when the thing behind it was falling apart.
Her eyes were red the entire time and her voice cracked.
Tristan watched her. He caught every micro-expression, every fractional delay between a question and her response, every moment where her smile arrived one beat too late. He knew her too well. He had always known her too well, and the knowledge was a gift and a weapon and right now it was both.
She started drifting toward the side corridor. The drift was subtle, a half-step at a time, the particular retreat of a woman who had calculated the minimum required appearance time and was approaching the threshold.
Tristan intercepted her before she reached the archway.
"I am feeling unwell," she said, her voice carrying a practiced steadiness.
"Then I am going with you."
"You should stay. They are your guests."
"They are our guests. And our guests can survive without us, because I am going where you are going, and where you are going is where I belong. That is the entire point of today."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, baby. Let’s go."
She didn’t argue or push back any more, because she wanted it to be true.
They left together.
✦✦✦
Their chambers had been transformed.
White roses covered every surface. Petals scattered across the bedding, the floor, the windowsills. Her belongings, moved in that morning, sat alongside his in the wardrobe, her books on his shelves, her brush on his dresser, the physical evidence of two lives merging into one space. Candles burned in clusters, the light warm and low, turning the stone walls into something softer.
It was beautiful. It was everything a wedding chamber was supposed to be.
River made it three steps inside before the composure shattered.
She walked past the bed, past the roses, past the candles, into the bathing chamber, where she slid down the wall, and sobbed.
The sound carried through the open doorway with the clarity of stone acoustics, reaching Tristan in the bedroom where he had stopped, one hand on the doorframe, listening to the woman he had married cry on a night that was supposed to be the best of their lives.
He entered the bathing chamber. Lowered himself to the floor beside her. His ceremonial whites hit the marble and he sat there, cross-legged, looking at her with green eyes that held zero pretense.
"Baby, let me handle this. There is no choice to make. There never was. Just you."
She shook her head. Tears fell onto the marble between her hands.
"The pull is real, Tristan. I can feel it. I felt your body respond to her. I felt your magic reach for hers before your mind could stop it."
"My body is an idiot. My magic is an idiot. Neither of them consulted me today. The pull exists. I am telling you, with my whole chest, that I will never act on it. I will break it. I will find a way."
"You cannot break a fated—"
"Watch me."
He stood. His hands found the laces at the back of her gown and he began to undo them, slowly, with the careful precision of a man undressing something sacred.
"This is the dress you wore when you walked towards me today," he said, his voice low, his fingers steady. "And when I saw you in it, every thought in my head stopped. Every thought."
The gown loosened. He drew it down over her shoulders, her arms, her hips, letting it pool at her feet in a circle of white silk and white roses.
He ran the bath. The basin was enormous, carved from a single block of marble veined with gold, large enough that Gavriel, watching from his impossible vantage, noted it could have housed three of any bath he had ever seen and still had room for commentary. The water steamed. Rose petals floated on the surface.
He lifted her in. She let him, because her legs were trembling and her body was exhausted and there was no fight left in her.
He undressed himself. Climbed in behind her. His arms wrapped around her from behind, pulling her back against his chest, his chin settling on the top of her head.
"You are it for me," he said against her hair. "You are it."
She inhaled sharply. The inhale broke into a sob, and the sob broke into something deeper, a grief that had been building since the moment Vesper walked through that door, and the grief was so heavy her breathing couldn’t support it.
She was hiccupping, gasping, unable to catch her breath, the specific pattern of a woman whose body had been holding together through will alone and had finally run out.
He held her tighter. Kissed her temple. Her jaw. The spot behind her ear. Each kiss was a word he was saying in the only language that mattered right now: I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.
"I am going to fix this," he said, voice firm. "Let me. Losing you is the only outcome I refuse to accept."
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