Page 110 of The General's Gift
Celeste could only look as he lifted his palms, first to his chest, then behind his head. Exposed. Unprotected. No shield, no defense. Her lungs forgot how to work. The man who held whole battalions in his palm was on his knees before her. It was like watching the tide reverse, or the heavens stoop to touch the earth.
He looked up at her then, and his eyes burned not with command, but with raw supplication. “This is all of me. No army, no rank, no fortress. Only a man. I’d rather live one night in your world than a lifetime in mine. I surrender to you, Celeste.”
The tears tore out of her, racking her frame. Her chest cracked wide open, as if her ribs had finally surrendered, admitting they could no longer hold the storm inside.
Was this truly happening?
To her?
To the girl who once trembled at shadows, who hid in fantasies because real life cut too deep?
Her knees gave way, and she sank before him.
“Don’t do this,” she sobbed. Her fingers clutched at him, trying to haul him up. “You don’t have to do this.”
Her chest filled, aching, breaking, remaking itself all at once. And what poured through her was love. A love fierce and consuming, made not of illusions but of scars and surrender. “I love you.”
He closed his arms around her, the safest place she had ever known. His exhale shuddered against her temple. Then his mouth moved across her face in reverent strokes—her cheek, her nose, her damp lashes, patching every fracture between them.
The world narrowed to breath and heartbeat, his mouth moving with hers until she lost the borders of her own body. Time unraveled. Minutes, hours, she could not tell or care. She only clung to his warmth, terrified that if she looked the spell would shatter.
She was threading her fingers through his hair when she touched something pointed. Drawing back just enough, she plucked it, a single ivy leaf. His coat was smeared with mud. There were twigs in his riding breeches.
A laugh trembled through her. “You decided to wear Oberon’s crown after all?”
His mouth twisted in wry self-mockery. “I wanted to surprise you with a Shakespearean declaration,” he murmured, his voice rough against her temple. “What would the king of fairies do now?”
"He’d turn into a jackass and cause mischief in the woods,” she whispered, eyes moist. “But I’d rather he kept kissing Titania instead.”
Heat surged through her as his tongue swept across hers, coaxing, claiming, drawing her deeper. His stubble rasped her skin, rough where she was soft, each scrape sending sparksdown her spine. He kissed her harder, as if every breath he took had to come through her.
Her body arched to meet him, pressed chest to chest, her pulse rioting in her throat. No castle walls, no troops, no pride. Only this man who had knelt for her, and now held her as though surrender had never tasted so sweet.
“Your declaration was better than any romantic comedy I ever read,” she said, breathless when he finally pulled back.
“Was it?”
She nodded, brushing her brow against his, a smile trembling through the tears.
“Then that means you’ll marry me.”
“Yes,” she laughed, unsteady and radiant all at once. “We shall marry on Midsummer Night, and we will—”
“No.” His hand framed her face, thumb stroking her cheek. “We’ll marry today, Celeste. Now. I won’t wait another hour.”
She blinked at him, stunned.
“I nearly cast you away once,” he said, voice breaking as though the memory still gutted him. “The greatest gift I’ve ever been given. Never again.”
And then he kissed her with all the hunger of a man who had marched through war and finally come home to find heaven waiting.
Rue leaned against the siege machine, arms crossed over her corset, scowling at the heavy oak door like it had insulted her mother. That damn door had been shut for hours.
The courtyard looked like the aftermath of a tired battlefield where both sides had given up the fight. The veterans of the Peninsula campaign and the reserves who had manned the siege no longer hurled insults—or rotten tomatoes. That phase had passed after the fourth round of “your mother was a French cannon.”
Now, the air hung heavy with anticipation.
“It’s too quiet,” Rue muttered, eyes narrowing.
