Chapter 23: The Real Wedding

"My condition is a law," Cassian said.

The gray lord waited.

"No forged seal in any court of the Abyss. Every page is signed in front of a witness, or it is nothing."

"Granted."

"No prince is ever again made to marry at midnight under threat of losing his crown."

A murmur ran through the rows.

The gray lord hesitated, and then he nodded.

"Granted."

"And the gate stays open at the lake to anyone who comes honestly.

"Mortal or Abyss or Light. Nobody shuts a door on a dying woman again."

"Granted, my lord," the gray lord said. "Is that all?"

"No."

Cassian turned around.

He came up the porch steps.

He went down on one knee in front of the swing, with two hundred people watching.

My mother put her hand over her mouth.

"Linnet Ashgrove," he said. "I'm asking you, and I'm asking you here, so nobody can say I took you by default."

"Cassian."

"You can say no.

"If you say no, I'll take the crown anyway.

"I'll still come to your mother's supper every harvest and sit at the end of the table and behave."

Somebody in the crowd laughed.

"If you say yes, I'll spend the rest of my life earning it."

I looked at his hand, with the long scar through the palm.

I looked at his face.

"Ask me again after I've slept for a week," I said.

His face fell, just slightly.

"Fine," he said. "I'll wait."

"I'm kidding, you idiot. Yes."

The lawn exploded.

The neighbors cheered, and the lords did not know whether to cheer, and the pastor's wife threw a biscuit.

Cassian rose and kissed me in front of all of them, and I didn't care who saw.

"One more matter," he said when he finally let me go.

He turned toward the end of the porch.

Odile had not moved.

They brought her down to the lake in the middle of the morning, with her hands still tied.

The Abyss court stood in its crescent, and the town stood behind it.

Cassian faced her at the end of the dock.

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