Page 146 of Reign
A ring rests in his palm.
For a second, I don’t breathe.
It isn’t gaudy. That’s the first absurd thing my mind notices because it needs somewhere safe to go before the emotion takes its legs out.
Dark metal, almost black, with a thin line of gold worked through it like a faultline of light inside stone. Simple at a glance, devastating up close. Inside the band, I can see engraving, though not clearly from where I’m sitting.
My hands remain still on the sheets because if I move too fast, I’m not sure what part of me will break open first.
Nikolaj’s voice drops lower.
“I had this made before Isle Lucia,” he says. “Before I knew if I had the right. Before I knew if I’d ever give it to you. I told myself it was stupid. That you were married, that we were Kings, that men like us don’t get rings unless they’re signing contractsor sealing alliances or making heirs they’ll eventually ruin. I told myself every practical reason not to bring it here tonight.”
He looks up at me then, and there is no mask left.
“Then I realized I don’t give a fuck.”
My breath shudders out of me.
He shifts closer between my legs, not giving the ring to me yet, not forcing the offer into my hand. Just holding it where I can see.
“I can’t give you a legal marriage,” he says. “Not now. Maybe not ever in a way the world will acknowledge without trying to put us both in graves. I can’t stand beside you in public and call you mine without starting a war before we’re ready for one. I can’t undo eight years. I can’t erase the contract with Arabella by wanting it gone. I can’t give you something clean, Vincenzo.”
His voice cracks slightly on my name, but he steadies it with visible effort.
“But I can give you forever in the only way that’s mine to give. I can give you the truth before strategy. I can give you every morning I can steal, and every night I can make safe. I can give you my blood, my name, my fucking loyalty, the parts of me they tried to carve out, and the parts that came back meaner for surviving it. I can give you a place no one else touches. I can give you this.”
My vision blurs, and I blink hard, uselessly. Nikolaj sees it and looks like the sight hurts him, but he doesn’t stop.
“You were my prince when we were young, then you became a King without me, and I hate that. I hate that you had to do that alone. But you are My King now, too, not because of the Families, not because of your bloodline, not because any council put a title on your head. Mine. The king of my heart, if you want the dramatic Russian version.” His mouth twists around a tiny, nervous smile that disappears almost immediately. “And I know that sounds fucking ridiculous in English, but it’s true.”
A tear slips down my cheek before I can stop it.
His eyes follow it, glassy and stricken, but he keeps his hand steady.
“So, I’m asking, not in front of God, because fuck Him for what He let happen, and not in front of our families, because they’ve taken enough, and not in front of any law that would call this impossible. I’m asking here. In your bed. After an argument. While you’re still angry at me, and I’m still trying to learn how not to ruin everything I love by trying to protect it.”
He lifts the ring slightly.
“Be mine forever,” he says. “Not in theory. Not as memory. Not only when the doors are locked, but also when the world is quiet. Mine in the way that matters. Mine when it’s hard, when we’re angry, when we fuck up, when the blood starts moving around us again, and every instinct we have says to lie first and confess later. Be mine, and I’ll be yours. No title above it. No crown before it. Just us, choosing each other like we should’ve been allowed to do eight years ago.”
I can’t speak. For once in my life, I genuinely cannot shape language.
The room around us has narrowed to his face, the ring in his hand, and the feeling of my own heart trying to tear its way out through my ribs.
I think about Arabella, and the contract between us, and the strange mercy of her own confession, Marie’s name in her mouth, the possibility that our marriage might become shelter instead of prison. I think about my father teaching me that love is weakness, about Lucien proving that loyalty can rot unnoticed, about every single structure in my life being designed to make me useful rather than happy.
And I think about Nikolaj on his knees between my legs, terrified and stubborn and beautiful, asking me for forever like it’s something we can steal back from history with bloody hands.
Maybe we can.
Maybe that’s always been our particular talent.
I reach for him—not the ring first.Him. My hands close around his face, and I drag him up enough so that I can kiss him. It’s clumsy because I’m crying now, really crying; no elegant tears I can pretend away.
He makes a broken sound against my mouth and kisses me back, one hand still carefully curled around the ring between us as if he refuses to risk dropping it even while I’m wrecking him.
When I pull back, our foreheads touch. His breathing is ragged. Mine is worse.
