Chapter Twenty-Nine

In her haste to make a good impression, she’d gone overboard with the gifts.

Maricela shifted the wrapped box in her arms as she climbed the last landing outside Irena Wolff’s apartment. Though the dinner invitation had come from Ivan, she had no doubt that his mother was the one behind it. The poor woman probably had no idea what had happened between them and was simply trying to extend a courtesy to a member of the royal family.

That made the evening even more nerve-wracking. Maricela would have to sit at a table with Ivan and make pleasant conversation, with no indication that, until very recently, they’d been lovers.

She took a deep, bracing breath and pressed the door chime with her elbow.

The door opened before the sound had entirely faded, and she found herself face-to-face with Ivan.

It was the first time she’d seen him since Kora took him away, and looking at him was harder than she’d imagined it would be. Bruises lingered on his face, and tape wrapped three of the fingers on his right hand. He was barefoot, clad in loose black sweatpants and a T-shirt that hugged his chest tightly enough to reveal the bandages wrapped around his torso. Dirty-blond hair fell over his forehead--he still hadn’t gotten it cut--and new lines bracketed his eyes.

“Maricela.” He said her name with a soft rasp that shivered over her as he stepped aside and pulled the door wide. “Thank you for coming.”

“Thank you for inviting me.” She dropped the gift box on the dining table with an accidental thud. “Sorry. The guards offered to carry it, but I wanted to deliver it myself.”

He poked at one edge of the box. “You didn’t have to bring anything. I just wanted to see you.”

Her heart thumped painfully. “They’re for your mother. Cookbooks. I told you that I’d help you find some for her.”

“She’ll love them.” He turned and gestured toward an open door that led out to a tiny little balcony with a table and two chairs. “She put out some lemonade and cookies before she left. I don’t think she trusted my manners. Do you want to...?”

There was no sign of Ivan’s mother, or of a dinner in progress in the immaculate kitchen. “Am I early?”

“No, she’s just using the big kitchen.” Ivan’s lips quirked. “She wants to show off for you.”

Maricela had expected to have a buffer between them, someone else to focus on for the duration of the evening. How was she supposed to sit with Ivan until then, pretending that everything was fine?

“I can’t do this, Ivan.” She indicated the balcony. “I can’t sit and eat cookies with you and make small talk like I’m okay. Because I’m not.”

“I know.” His hand came up, like he was about to reach for her, but he stopped with his bandaged fingers hovering a few inches from her shoulder. “I don’t want to make small talk. I just--I need to get this out in the right order. Please.”

If he had things to say, she’d listen. She owed him that much. “What is it?”

He drew in a deep breath. Exhaled. She could see him gathering his courage. “There’s--there’s a priestess here. Minako. She helps people who are struggling.”

“I know who she is. She trained as a therapist before she took her vows.”

“I’ve been talking to her.” Ivan rubbed at his shoulder with his uninjured hand, staring somewhere past Maricela. “About the shit that happened when I was a kid. About the war. About a lot of stuff. I don’t really like doing it. I don’t know if I ever will, but...I need to try. I need to see if I can find the person you always saw when you looked at me.”

“Not saw.” Her throat ached. “The person I see.”

His gaze snapped to hers. “Even after what I did? I hurt you, Maricela. And I told myself it was some noble shit, that you were better off hating me. But I was just so fucking scared. I’d never imagined a future before you. I’d never hoped.”

And she’d gone back on her word, retracting a marriage proposal that she’d offered out of love, with all her heart. The worst kind of betrayal. “We all do terrible things sometimes. All we can do is make amends and move on.”

“Yeah.” He reached out again, and this time his fingertips grazed her cheek. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

She ducked away, ashamed that she couldn’t let him touch her at all, not even in comfort or apology. “It’s in the past, Ivan.”

“Do you still love me?”

Grateful that she wasn’t facing him anymore, she leaned on the back of a dining chair and tried to blink away her tears. It didn’t work. “Yes.”

“Then marry me, Maricela. If you can forgive me, marry me.”

The words pierced her like a blade. But she’d earned this pain with her carelessness and naivety, with all her blind promises, and she had to face it.

She turned to him. “Nothing has changed. All the reasons you couldn’t accept when I asked--they’re still there. I can’t give you what you need. I can’t guarantee your father’s legacy.”

“My father already has a legacy.” He took a step closer. “I spent so much time trying to be him that I never thought about what losing him meant. I grew up without a father. My mother had to live alone, without his love or support. His legacy isn’t just his sainthood. It’s also all the ways his death broke the people he left behind.”

“What if they hate you?” She could survive that, but there was one thing she’d never get over. “What if that makes you hate me?”

“Why would that make me hate you?” Another step, and he was almost touching her again, so close she could feel him along every inch of her body through the empty space between them. “I survived it before, and I had nothing. So what if they hate me again? This time, I would have everything. I’d have you.”

The temptation to throw herself into his arms nearly overwhelmed her as she drank in his words. In the end, she touched his arm, brushing one of the ravens inked into his skin. “Are you sure?”

“For the first time in my life.” He cupped her cheek again, and this time she didn’t pull away. “I don’t care if I die and disappear from history. I don’t care if I never become a saint. Making you happy for the rest of my life is the best legacy I can imagine.”

It seemed like years since he’d last touched her, and she leaned in to his caress as the tightness in her chest slowly began to ease. “You love me.”

“I love you.” He stroked her cheek with his thumb. “I want to show you the world. All the parts you never got to see.”

“And you want to marry me.”

“If you’re still offering.”

“Always.” She stretched up and brushed her lips over his. “I’ll never want anything else. Just you.”

Ivan caught her up in his arms and hauled her close--then hissed out a breath and winced. “Okay, sweeping you off your feet might have to wait for my ribs to finish healing.”

“Oh, my God.” She hustled him toward the nearest padded surface, a plush, dark blue loveseat in the living area. “Sit.”

He dropped obediently to the loveseat but pulled her down to sit on his lap. “I’m okay. Just...you know. Remind me not to wrestle with a Makhai soldier who actively wants me dead. Now I know how much Ashwin’s always holding back.”

“You’re still here. Not only that, you won.” She combed his hair back from his forehead. “Ashwin’s flabbergasted.”

“I was highly motivated.” He inched her a little closer, his fingers curling around her waist with a possessive pressure that made her stomach clench. “But I didn’t win, not really. We won.”

“You know what that means, then.”

“What?”

She whispered the words against his lips. “That we really are perfect as long as we’re together.”

He kissed her. Slow, sweet, like it was the first time, his lips warm and soft. His fingers flexed on her hips, and when she opened her mouth, he lifted one hand to the back of her head, his fingers tangling in her hair as he licked her lower lip.

Maricela fell into the kiss. For the first time, there was no danger, no risk of discovery. If anyone caught them, they’d see a woman and her beloved, not a princess and her bodyguard. It was freeing in a way that even confessing the truth to Gideon and Isabela hadn’t been.

Ivan was hers. And everyone was going to know it.

His fingers clenched tight in her hair for a heartbeat, and the urgency in his kiss thrilled her. But then he broke away with a groan. “We shouldn’t do this. You have a habit of making me lose control, and my mother will be back any minute.”

“She what?” Maricela scrambled off his lap and tried to smooth her hair. “I thought that was an excuse. Ivan, I can’t meet your mother looking like we just--like we--”

He rose with a wince and used his fingers to comb her hair down. “Like we were about to defile her loveseat?”

“Shh.”

Ivan’s warm laughter spilled over her as he tugged on her dress to straighten it. “Okay, I’ll behave. But you don’t have to be nervous. She’s going to love you.”

He sounded so certain. “What about my family?”

“Your brother’s still pissed at me.” The words sounded damning, but he was smiling as he ran his hands up her arms. “But he also told me he’d welcome me into the family--if I was smart enough to love you.”

Maricela bit her lip to hide an answering smile. “And Isabela?”

He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “I was thinking about hiding behind you until she forgives me.”

“Good answer.” Some of her humor faded. “If it were up to me, we’d go to the temple tomorrow and get married. But there will be parts of this we don’t get to avoid. You know that, right?”

“I know. Your brother told me that, too.” His hands slid from her shoulders up to her face. “I’m ready for it. The big wedding. All the people staring at me. Being a Rios and everything that comes with it. Because you’re worth it, Maricela. You’re worth anything.”

Maybe defiling the loveseat wasn’t such a bad idea. Or the floor. Or even the balcony. She leaned closer, twisting her hands in the warm cotton of his shirt, and--

The front door chimed.

Ivan chuckled against her lips. “Are you ready?”

“No.” She laughed. “Yes. Maybe?”

Ivan kissed her one more time before answering the door. He plucked a huge basket out of his mother’s arms and waved her inside. Irena Wolff was tall and curvy, with long blonde hair silvering at the temples and Ivan’s blue eyes and ready smile.

She glanced at Ivan, who nodded once. Then held open her arms to Maricela. “Can I hug you? Is it okay if I hug you?”

“I...” No more words would come, but that was okay. Maricela reached out to Irena, who folded her in a hug so tight she could barely breathe.

“Thank you,” the woman whispered against her ear, her voice wavering with tears. “Thank you for making him happy. Thank you for loving him the way he deserves.”

All Maricela could do was nod.

Irena hugged her again, then pulled back and swiped at her cheeks. “I’m so happy to have you here. Come, come...” She drew Maricela over to the table where Ivan was unpacking the food. “I want to hear everything.”

“Everything?” Ivan flashed her a warning look, which Maricela promptly ignored in favor of pulling out a chair. “Well, I suppose it all started on the last ceremonial training day for the Riders. I tried to ask Ivan out on a date, something he completely missed...”

As Irena’s laughter pealed through the room, Maricela caught Ivan’s eye again, and she knew he was remembering that day as clearly as she was.

My hero.

My princess.

They were still those things, but they were also more. Friends, lovers. Confidants. Everything that had happened--all the trauma, the danger, the forbidden yearning--had brought them here, a winding path that had led them exactly where they needed to be.

And she couldn’t imagine anything more perfect.