spend the rest of my life with you, if you can ever forgive me.”
The silence was deep enough to drown in.
“Infuriating. Incorrigible. Inelegant. Inefficient. Incredible in both senses. But not, in the end, insincere, are you, Dazen Guile?”
“Huh?”
“Kiss me,” Karris said.
“Pardon?”
“It wasn’t a request.”
He stood up from his chair and sat on the edge of her bed. She grunted with pain as his movement jostled her.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Maybe-”
“Not a request.”
“But your lips are cracked and-”
“Not a request.”
“Ah.”
He kissed her with the gentleness of a man kissing an invalid.
She pulled back, peering at him through swollenness-slitted eyes, disapproving. “That was horrible, Dazen Guile. That was not the kiss I’ve been waiting sixteen years for.”
“Second chance?” he asked.
She looked unconvinced. “Hm. You don’t deserve it.”
“I don’t,” he said seriously.
“You don’t,” she said gravely, “but then, if you and I aren’t about second chances, I don’t know who is.” She grinned a bit, though.
He kissed her again, tenderly, but drawing her in. But what began as a gift for her benefit, a smooth, strong seduction soon morphed. He folded her small form into his, wrapping protective arms around her. As they kissed, he could feel a tension loosening in him, a tension that had been knotted for so long he’d come to think of that pain as part of the pain of being alive.
She pulled back, and instantly back on guard, fearing rejection, Gavin pulled back, too.
But Karris murmured, “I’m afraid you’ve left me breathless, Lord Guile-”
“Well thank you.” Relief beneath his grin.
“-because I can’t breathe through my nose right now.”
She laughed and he joined her ruefully. “You are so beautiful,” he said. He felt as if his heart had swollen too large for his chest.
A dubious look. “I might be part blind right now, but you shouldn’t be. I got beat up, what’s your excuse?”
He chuckled. “I didn’t mean particularly, precisely at this moment-You know what? I think my lips can make a more convincing case without words. Come back here.”
They kissed, and kissed, and chuckled together about Karris needing to take little breaths and Gavin misreading her little moans of desire and her little moans of pain when he got too passionate. The world ceased. No worries, no cares. That knot Gavin hadn’t known he carried eased and opened and disappeared, and he felt suddenly stronger than he had been in his entire life. Free. The power of the secret broken, chains shattered.
“Orholam have mercy, how I want to make love with you,” she said.
“I can be persuaded,” Gavin said quickly.
She made a little sound of frustration. “If only my body were so amenable.”
“I could be… gentle,” he offered, giving a roguish grin.
She pulled him close and whispered in his ear, “After sixteen years of missing you, Dazen Guile, the last thing I want from you is gentle.”
He swallowed. Speechless. “Will you marry me, Karris White Oak?” Damn. He could have done better than that. Such questions should have some eloquence.
Then again with his history with Karris, perhaps a simple truth was better than an artful one.
“Karris, why are you crying?”
“Because it’s past time for my pain medicine, you big idiot.”
There was a knock on Gavin’s door. “Oh, you have got to be joking,” Gavin said, looking at the door like he could kill it with his eyes. He turned back to her. “Does that mean yes?”
“You’ve worn me down and taken advantage of my incapacitated state, so…”
“So that means yes?”
Another knock on the door.
“You stupid, stupid man, of course it does.”
“I love you, Karris White Oak.”
She smiled mischievously. “You ought to.”
The door opened, and a Blackguard wheeled the White in. Gavin couldn’t keep the huge grin off his face.
“Oh dear, have I interrupted something?” the White asked.
“No,” Gavin said. At the same time Karris said, “Yes.”
“I see.”
“You were just the person I was hoping to see,” Gavin said. “High Mistress White, would you be so good as to marry us?”
The White inclined her head, looking over the corrective spectacles she was wearing. “Well, Gavin Guile, it certainly took you long enough. And Karris White Oak! Slowest seduction in history! A woman with your charms.” The White sniffed.
“Is that a yes?” Gavin asked.
“Of course it is,” Karris answered for her. She was grinning from ear to ear.
“I imagine that Gavin’s heading straight off to war, and that you’ll want this done as soon as he gets back?” the White said.
“No,” Gavin said. “Right now.”
“Right now?” Karris said. “Don’t you want to give this some thought? We have no idea what we’re getting into.”
“And when will we? Some things you can’t know until you’re in them. I’ll be in it with you. That’s more than enough for me.” Gavin turned to the White. “Right now.”
The White grumbled. “Figures.” But she smiled. “Gavin, you’re willing to have your father disown you over this?”
“I’m feeling invincible right now,” Gavin said. “How’d you know about that, Orea?”
“Disowned?” Karris asked.
“I’ll explain. Later,” Gavin said.
“Me, too,” the White said. “Karris, you know what this may mean for your tenure?”
“Yes,” Karris said.
“Rules are made to bend for the right people,” Gavin said.
“Promise me a big wedding when you get back,” Karris said.
“Huge.”
And so they were wed. The vows were simple. In the discharge of his normal duties as Prism, Gavin had prompted brides and grooms through the vows himself, but today he forgot them. And as soon as they were out of his mouth, they became a blur. He was barely aware even of the White, he had eyes only for Karris. He was filled with an inexplicable tenderness for this wild, frustrating, beautiful, stubborn, amazing woman.
He kissed Karris again, and she grimaced under her smile.
“Time for more medicine?” he asked.
She nodded, apologetic.
He found the tincture and poured her the dose. She accepted it gratefully and lay back on her pillows. “Come back to me, my lord. Come back soon, you hear me?”
“Yes, my lady,” he said. He couldn’t stop grinning.
She was asleep in less than a minute.
