Chapter 7

Rosalie's POV

The registry office at city hall, early morning.

I'd dressed plainly on purpose. A cream knit dress, my hair loosely pinned up. No jewelry. Not one piece of what Bryce had given me had come out of the drawer with me.

From today on, I don't want to borrow anyone's light.

I stood in the corridor clutching my documents, my mind a little blank. Nerves crawled up my spine, and I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath.

Disinfectant, toner, someone's cheap perfume, and the cold damp air off the Charles River through the window. Peeling it apart layer by layer, sorting it, until my breathing steadied.

"Miss Fairfax."

I came back to myself. Cassian had arrived at some point, standing a few steps away, hands in his coat pockets, not coming closer.

He'd changed into a clean shirt—easy, unbothered—yet that wild, predatory intensity still couldn't be tamped down, a quality utterly unlike the young lords and heiresses I was used to, and my gaze drifted to him without my meaning it to.

"Mr. Thackeray." I nodded, tucking away that lapse of the closed eyes and deep breath. "You're early."

"Habit." He glanced at the documents in my arms. "All there?"

"All there."

He made a low sound of acknowledgment and said nothing more. The two of us stood side by side, a step apart, with a silence between us wide enough to fit the entire Charles River.

A crowd surged toward the service window in the corridor, and a man with a briefcase—his eyes not on where he was going but drifting somewhere over my way—came straight at my shoulder.

Before I could even react, a hand had clamped over the small of my back—not hard, but leaving no room for argument—and pulled me half a step toward his side.

The man brushed past Cassian's shoulder and went on.

And I was drawn entirely within the reach of his arm.

He stood a full head and more above me, close enough that I could smell the smoke and fire on his shirt collar that no amount of washing could scrub out, close enough to feel the heat of the hand pressed against the small of my back. Scalding, it burned all the way up through the thin fabric, like a current running up my spine.

Just that one instant.

I froze in place, forgetting to breathe.

"Steady." He lowered his head, his voice dropped low, those gray-blue eyes tilting down at me, close enough that I could count the darker ring of gray at their centers. "It's crowded here."

His breath skimmed the loose strands of hair at my brow.

My heart skipped a beat, then abruptly began to pound, hammering until my ears rang.

Then the hand withdrew, clean and quick, as though nothing had happened. He stepped back to his one pace of distance, hands returning to his pockets, becoming once more the stranger with the whole Charles River between us.

The spot at the small of my back where he'd held me still carried a ring of burning heat.

"…Thank you." I clutched my documents until my knuckles went pale.

"Mm."

Don't read into it. I told myself. He just blocked someone out of reflex—he'd have done the same for anyone on the street.

But this was Gemma's cousin. The contract husband I'd be signing papers with in ten minutes. The man whose very first words to me were "don't develop feelings you shouldn't."

And of all times, it was now that my heartbeat slipped out of control.

It wasn't logical. It was absurdly, ridiculously not logical.

The clerk calling numbers poked his head out. "Fairfax and Thackeray? You're up. Fast-track, this way—honestly, I've worked here nine years, and this is the first firefighter exemption expedite I've ever seen. You two got lucky."

"Thank you," I said quietly.

The ceremony was laughably short. The clerk read out a few formulaic lines, yawning halfway through.

"…do you take each other as lawful spouses of your own free will."

"I do," I said.

"I do," he said. His voice was steady, like answering an ordinary dispatch call.

"Sign here." The clerk pushed the document over. "Full legal name, no smudging."

I bent my head, gripped the pen, and wrote out my name stroke by stroke.

R-o-s-a-l-i-e.

This time, I saw clearly every letter I signed.

Not fumbling my way across that forged, fake certificate by feel, but perfectly clear, watching the ink land on a Certified Copy with a raised embossed seal and a watermarked security page. The original, from a government registry. Real.

The clerk finished stamping the seal and pushed the original over. "There you go, you're legally married now. As is customary—want to hug? A lot of newlyweds—"

"No need." He and I spoke almost at the same time.

The clerk went blank for a moment, then gave an awkward laugh. "…All right, what a well-matched couple."

I looked away. He turned his head aside too.

That instant of shared instinct made my ears burn hotter than any hug could have.

I cradled that page, my thumb pressing over the raised ridges of the seal, my eyes stinging. For the first time, I'd taken my own life back into my hands.

Out the door, the morning light cut in at a slant across the corridor. I couldn't help turning to ask him.

"The three-day waiting period—how did you actually get around it?" The whole thing made no sense. "That's not something you can skip by pulling strings."

"I'm a firefighter." He turned his face aside, the morning light falling across half of it. "On-call at any time. There are channels I can use."

"That simple?"

"That simple." He raised his eyes to me.

That was the moment.

The angle of his lifted gaze, the color of those eyes in the morning light, fathomless gray-blue. It overlapped, seam for seam, with the eyes from my memory of the fire—the ones that had kicked through the door and carried me out of the flames.

It was him.

"Don't be afraid, I'll get you out." Those words from the dream detonated in my ears.

The man who'd carried me out was standing right in front of me.

My eyes flew wide, a chill shooting up from the back of my neck to the crown of my head, my hand flying up to cover my mouth without my willing it. My heart slammed until my chest ached.

"You…" I opened my mouth, my voice trembling. "Have we… met before?"

He paused. Something in those gray-blue eyes sank away fast, then was smoothed flat.

"Maybe." He turned his head aside, his tone bland enough to betray nothing. "You're nervous."

He reached out, gently straightened the certificate I'd crumpled in my grip, and tucked it back into my arms, his fingertips brushing the back of my hand by accident.

We both went still.

"Don't be nervous." He drew his hand back, his voice pitched very low. "From now on, you've got me."

You've got me.