“All right, I give up,” said Cinder. “How did you know this was here?”
“Wolf mentioned it last night when he was showing us around the farm. The creek marks the end of their property. That side belongs to the neighbor.”
“It’s very nice,” she said somewhat haltingly, “but … why are you showing me a creek?”
“We’re not looking at the creek.” He pointed up. “We’re looking at the stars.”
She laughed and tilted her head back. The moon had begun to dip toward the horizon, three-quarters full and surrounded by swirls of stars that could never be seen from a metropolis like New Beijing.
“Also very nice,” she said. “But believe it or not, I’ve actually seen these stars before.”
“Well, aren’t you hard to impress,” he said wryly.
“Sorry. What I meant was, this is breathtaking.”
“Thank you. I thought it would be nice to look up at the night sky with you beside me for once, rather than just wishing you were beside me.”
Cinder felt a pang of guilt for being so flippant before, when the truth was …
“I do that too,” she said. “I’ll look out at the stars and pretend you’re with me, or wonder if you’re looking at the same constellations that I am, maybe at that same moment.” She nestled her body against his and smiled when Kai kissed the top of her head. It felt so natural. Like they’d done this every night for years, rather than having been separated for most of that time.
“I have a confession,” Kai mumbled into her hair.
She tilted her head to peer at him. “Careful. There could be paparazzi hiding behind these trees. Any confessions might end up on tomorrow’s newsfeeds.”
He pretended to consider this for a moment, eyes twinkling, before he said, “I could live with that.”
She sat up straighter so she could turn to look at him. “Out with it, then.”
“When I was figuring out what to say for the wedding, I kept thinking about you and me.”
Cinder jolted. “I knew it!”
Kai’s eyebrows shot upward.
“I mean, there seemed to be a lot of overlap,” she added. “Especially that part about defying race and distance and physiological tampering.”
He cocked his head, grinning as he inspected her. “Actually, I was referring more to the part about finding someone who complements you and makes you stronger. And being with someone not because you have some political agenda, but because … you love them.”
She gazed at him, and he gazed back for a long, long moment, until finally Kai shrugged and admitted, “And, fine, what you said too.”
“Thank you.”
“Cinder.” Kai pulled one leg onto the bank, turning his body so they were facing each other. He took her hands between his and her heart began to drum unexpectedly. Not because of his touch, and not even because of his low, serious tone, but because it occurred to Cinder all at once that Kai was nervous.
Kai was never nervous.
“I asked you once,” he said, running his thumbs over her knuckles, “if you thought you would ever be willing to wear a crown again. Not as the queen of Luna, but … as my empress. And you said that you would consider it, someday.”
She swallowed a breath of cool night air. “And … this is that day?”
His lips twitched, but didn’t quite become a smile. “I love you. I want to be with you for the rest of my life. I want to marry you, and, yes, I want you to be my empress.”
Cinder gaped at him for a long moment before she whispered, “That’s a lot of wanting.”
“You have no idea.”
She lowered her lashes. “I might have some idea.”
Kai released one of her hands and she looked up again to see him reaching into his pocket—the same that had held Wolf’s and Scarlet’s wedding rings before. His fist was closed when he pulled it out and Kai held it toward her, released a slow breath, and opened his fingers to reveal a stunning ring with a large ruby ringed in diamonds.
It didn’t take long for her retina scanner to measure the ring, and within seconds it was filling her in on far more information than she needed—inane words like carats and clarity scrolled past her vision. But it was the ring’s history that snagged her attention. It had been his mother’s engagement ring once, and his grandmother’s before that.
Kai took her hand and slipped the ring onto her finger. Metal clinked against metal, and the priceless gem looked as ridiculous against her cyborg plating as the simple gold band had looked on Wolf’s enormous, deformed, slightly hairy hand.
Cinder pressed her lips together and swallowed, hard, before daring to meet Kai’s gaze again.
“Cinder,” he said, “will you marry me?”
Absurd, she thought.
The emperor of the Eastern Commonwealth was proposing to her. It was uncanny. It was hysterical.
But it was Kai, and somehow, that also made it exactly right.
“Yes,” she whispered, “I will marry you.”
Those simple words hung between them for a breath, and then she grinned and kissed him, amazed that her declaration didn’t bring the surge of anxiety she would have expected years ago. He drew her into his arms, laughing between kisses, and she suddenly started to laugh too. She felt strangely delirious.
They had stood against all adversity to be together, and now they would forge their own path to love. She would be Kai’s wife. She would be the Commonwealth’s empress. And she had every intention of being blissfully happy for ever, ever after.
CHAPTER ONE
THREE LUSCIOUS LEMON TARTS glistened up at Catherine. She reached her towel-wrapped hands into the oven, ignoring the heat that enveloped her arms and pressed against her cheeks, and lifted the tray from the hearth. The tarts’ sunshine filling quivered, as if glad to be freed from the stone chamber.
Cath held the tray with the same reverence one might reserve for the King’s crown. She refused to take her eyes from the tarts as she padded across the kitchen floor until the tray’s edge landed on the baker’s table with a satisfying thump. The tarts trembled for a moment more before falling still, flawless and gleaming.
Setting the towels aside, she picked through the curled, sugared lemon peels laid out on parchment and arranged them like rose blossoms on the tarts, settling each strip into the still-warm center. The aromas of sweet citrus and buttery, flaky crust curled beneath her nose.
She stepped back to admire her work.
The tarts had taken her all morning. Five hours of weighing the butter and sugar and flour, of mixing and kneading and rolling the dough, of whisking and simmering and straining the egg yolks and lemon juice until they were thick and creamy and the color of buttercups. She had glazed the crust and crimped the edges like a lace doily. She had boiled and candied the delicate strips of lemon peel and ground sugar crystals into a fine powder for garnish. Her fingers itched to dust the tart edges now, but she refrained. They had to cool first, or else the sugar would melt into unattractive puddles on the surface.
These tarts encompassed everything she had learned from the tattered recipe books on the kitchen shelf. There was not a hurried moment nor a careless touch nor a lesser ingredient in those fluted pans. She had been meticulous at every step. She had baked her very heart into them.
Her inspection lingered, her eyes scanning every inch, every roll of the crust, every shining surface.