Chapter 1936: Bittersweet Emotions

Quinlan Elysiar left his women to their war and walked out into the corridor, where the noise of the sickroom followed him through two closed doors.

He had one more woman to see, and she was the only one who had watched the whole thing.

A seam of pale light opened in the corridor at his gesture, and beyond it hung a sky full of stars no navigator on Iskaris had ever charted. He stepped through, and the estate closed behind him.

The soul realm was quiet, as it always was, no wind, the stars low, dense, and motionless overhead.

Pink light pulsed from the tree at the heart of the clearing into roots that curled deep into the dark soil, and up in its branches a small blue shape was swinging its legs.

"He’s here!" Mimi called down.

On the throne, the Primordial Demon of Lust had already arranged herself.

Nyxara sat with one leg crossed over the other and her chin on her hand, pink eyes half-lidded, and she had clearly been sitting exactly like that since the moment his knee touched Jasmine’s floor.

The crimson brand on her abdomen glowed through the dark.

"My Ruin~" she purred. "Congratulations. Many great men fumble what you just did."

"You watched."

"Of course. I watch everything." She uncrossed her legs and crossed them the other way. "Your little samurai petted you like the most precious thing to have ever existed. I’m happy for you, my love. Truly."

He came up the steps of the throne. For once, she stayed in her chair.

She meant it.

Billions of years of watching men marry had taught the Primordial Demon of Lust exactly what a wedding was worth, and she had ended enough of them from the inside to know the difference between a bargain and the thing he had just done.

Her Ruin had knelt, and she had been proud enough to bite her own knuckle on the throne.

But she was also a woman, and the woman had been alone in the dark for a very long time.

She had decorated this place for him. She had made the sky pretty, painted the child’s nails, and kept a dead realm alive so it would feel like home on the days he came here because he needed something.

Tomorrow there would be a hall on a square full of people watching him marry everyone but her. She would watch it from this chair. She would cheer, and she would mean that too, and it would still be the loneliest afternoon of her very long life.

There was nothing to be done about any of it. She was too old for fits, too proud, and far too happy for him to spoil it with her insecurities.

So she smiled, and kept it to herself.

"You shouldn’t be here," Nyxara said, and flicked her fingers at the air behind him where the seam had been. "This moment is too precious to waste on me. We can have fun later. Go back to your brid-"

He went down on one knee in front of the throne.

The composure went out of her mid-word.

Nyxara looked at him with her mouth still open on the rest of the sentence.

"...You just said a man kneels once," she managed. "Once in his life. You just said it. Are you not a man?"

"I am a man who breaks the rules when they’re to be broken."

"That is not-"

"Especially for you."

He took her hand off the arm of the throne and held it, and she let him, because she had apparently forgotten how her arm worked.

"I wish I could show you off like the rest of them," Quinlan said. "I wish I could walk you into that hall tomorrow and let the whole world see my precious demoness in all her glory."

"You don’t come out of this realm for anything smaller than the end of the world, and if you did, nobody on that square would look at a bride again. So I can’t."

Her fingers had gone still in his.

"But that doesn’t make you any less my woman. It doesn’t mean you deserve any less than they do." He looked up at her and smiled, soft and tender, full of love. "So I’m asking you properly."

"Nyxara. Will you be my wife?"

For a long moment, the Primordial Demon of Lust did not do anything at all.

Overhead, the legs stopped swinging.

Then her free hand came up and pressed itself flat over her mouth, and above it her eyes went wide, then wider, then began to shine.

"...Ask me again," she said through her fingers.

"Will you be my wife?"

"Again."

"Nyxara, will you-"

"Yes!" It came out as a squeal, and the demoness who had shattered the will of a relic blade without leaving her chair shot to her feet so fast the throne rocked.

"Yes! Yes, yes, yes, obviously yes!!! How dare you?! How dare you do this to me?! Look at me, I’m shaking!"

She was. Both hands had gone to her cheeks, and she was standing on the top step of her throne, bouncing on her toes.

"Are you sure I deserve-"

"Yes." Quinlan refused to hear the rest of it.

"But I’m-"

"Nyxara. I love you, I want you to be my wife. That’s it."

The demoness was out of excuses.

Up in the tree, Mimi had both fists knotted in her own hair and was giggling so hard the branch shook.

"She’s crying!" the little dryad announced to the whole realm. "I’ve never seen her make that face!"

"I am not crying, you little ruffian-"

"It’s my turn!" Mimi dropped out of the branches and landed in the grass with a bounce. "You always do my nails, so it’s my turn now! I’m doing yours! For the wedding!"

"..." Nyxara merely wept in response. She came down the last step of the throne and threw both arms around the man on his knee, hard enough to take him off it, and buried her face in his neck exactly where she always did when the performance ran out.

He held her. She was shaking against his chest, the brand on her abdomen burning crimson against him, and for once the Primordial Demon of Lust had nothing theatrical to say.

"I love you," she said into his neck. "I love you so much. I love you so much it’s stupid. I’ve had billions of years to learn better and I haven’t learned a thing."

"Good."

"I’m going to be a terrible wife."

"I’m counting on it."

"H-how dare you! Deny it! It’s your duty as a man!" She laughed, wet, into his collar. She did not let go. Behind them, a small blue dryad was already hunting through the grass for the bottle of pink.

It was time to hold the greatest marriage Iskaris had ever known!