“You know, technically, you two shouldn’t even be together right now,” Winston says, swiveling to face us. He walks backward as he says, “The bride and groom can’t just hang out together on their wedding day. Tradition frowns upon it.”
“Excellent point,” Brendan adds. “And as they’re both such pure, innocent souls, we wouldn’t want them to risk accidental, indecent skin-to-skin contact.”
“Yeah, I think it might be too late for that,” Kenji says.
“Seriously?” Brendan and Nazeera say at the same time.
Brendan laughs, but Nazeera turns sharply around to look at Ella, whose responding blush all but confirms their suspicions.
“Wow,” Nazeera says after a moment, nodding. “Nice. You have interesting priorities.”
“Oh my God,” Ella says, covering her face with her hand. “Sometimes I really hate you guys.”
I decide to change the subject.
“Will we be arriving at this mysterious destination soon?” I ask. “We’ve been walking for so long I’m beginning to wonder whether I’ll need international clearance.”
“Is this guy serious?” Winston calls back, exasperated. “It’s been maybe five minutes.”
“Sprinting two miles—uphill, in the heat, in a suit—and he doesn’t break a sweat,” Kenji says. “Wouldn’t even let me rest for thirty-seconds. But this—yeah, this is too much for him. Makes sense.”
“Okay, you can ignore them,” Ella says, taking my hand again. “We’re pretty close now.” I feel her enthusiasm building anew, her eyes brightening as she peers ahead.
“So—what changed yesterday?” I ask her. “To make all this happen?”
Ella looks up. “What do you mean?”
“Yesterday Nouria told me that, for a number of different reasons, it was basically out of the question for us to have a wedding. But today”—I glance around us, at the mass of people sacrificing hours of their work and life to help organize this event—“those issues no longer seem to be relevant.”
“Oh,” Ella says, and sighs. “Yeah. Yesterday was a mess. I really didn’t want to postpone things, but there were just so many different disasters to deal with. Losing our clothes was one obstacle, but trying to host the wedding at night was proving a logistical nightmare. I realized we could either get married last night and have to compromise on almost everything, or push it by a day, and maybe, just maybe, be able to do it right—”
“A day?” I frown. “Nouria made it seem like it might be months before we could reschedule. She made it sound functionally impossible.”
“Months?” Ella stiffens. “Why would she say that?”
“You must’ve really pissed her off,” Kenji says, his laughter echoing. “Nouria knew Juliette wouldn’t have postponed the wedding that long. She was probably just torturing you.”
“Really.” The revelation makes me scowl. Between her and Sam, I seem to have made two very powerful enemies.
“Hey—I’m sorry she said that to you,” Ella says softly, hugging me from the side as we walk. I wrap my arm around her shoulders, holding her tight against me.
“I think Nouria leaned a little too hard into the cover story,” she says. “I had no idea you thought we might be postponing the wedding that far into the future. I’m only now realizing that yesterday must’ve been pretty rough for you.”
“It wasn’t,” I lie, gently cupping the back of her head, my fingers threading through the silk of her hair. I study her face as she stares up at me, noticing then how the sun changes her eyes; her irises look more green in the light. Blue in the dark. “It was fine.”
Ella doesn’t buy this.
Her hands graze my hips as she draws away, lingering before she lets go. “I was so busy trying to make everything work that I didn’t even—”
She cuts herself off, her emotions changing without warning.
“Hey,” she says. “What’s this?”
“What’s what?”
“This,” she says, gently prodding my pant leg in a manner that would disturb Kenji for weeks. “This box.”
“Oh.”
I come to a sudden and complete stop, heart pounding as the crowd surges around us, several of them calling out congratulations as they pass. Someone sticks a homemade tiara on Ella’s head at one point, which she accepts with a gracious nod before discreetly tugging it out of her hair.