Natural Conclusions

Spring was breaking through at last.

Ilyra stood at her chamber window, watching the gardens below show their first colours after months of grey. Snowdrops pushed through the dark earth. Crocuses bloomed in defiant purple clusters along the stone paths. The world was waking, and her chest felt lighter than it had in years.

Dorian’s exile felt like something that happened to someone else.

She turned from the window as Mira entered with her breakfast tray. The maid’s movements were careful, her expression neutral in a way that looked rehearsed. When had Mira started watching her like that? Like a woman studying a wound she dared not touch?

“The gardens are lovely this morning,” Ilyra said.

“Yes, my Lady.” Mira set the tray on the small table by the window. “Cook prepared your favourites. The early strawberries came in from the southern provinces.”

Ilyra picked up a berry, turning it in her gloved fingers. Dove grey today, soft kid leather lined with silk. Another gift from Evander - he seemed to have an endless supply of them, each pair arriving with a note about court fashion or the chill of spring mornings.

“Thank you, Mira. That will be all.”

The maid curtsied and withdrew. A flicker of hesitation crossed her face as she turned, but Ilyra dismissed it. Servants were always careful around royalty. It meant nothing.

She ate her breakfast alone, watching the gardeners move between the flowerbeds below. The palace felt lighter. As if a weight had been lifted from its ancient stones. Or perhaps that was only her.

He is alive, she reminded herself. Just elsewhere. Drinking himself into obscurity in some distant province. Exactly what I wanted.

The guilt had softened into a manageable ache over the past days. A weight she could set aside, like a book she had finished reading. Dorian had earned his fate. Everyone said so. Even the court had moved on with unseemly speed, the whispers fading into the background noise of politics and gossip.

Evander had been absent for three days now. Business in the city, he had said. His estates, his correspondence, the endless administrative details that occupied a man of his position. She understood. She did.

She missed him anyway.

More than she should. More than was proper for a courtship still in its early months. But he was the only one who listened. The only one who saw her as more than the spare princess, the sickly afterthought. When he looked at her, she felt seen.

She finished her breakfast and descended to the gardens, letting the pale spring sunshine warm her face. The morning stretched ahead of her, empty of him.

He found her in the rose arbour.

She did not hear him approach. One moment she was alone with her book, the words blurring on the page as her thoughts drifted elsewhere. The next, a shadow fell across her lap.

“You are far away today.”

Her heart leapt. She looked up to find him standing at the arbour’s entrance, the spring light catching in his dark hair, his expression soft with something that might have been concern.

“You’re back,” she said, and heard the relief in her own voice. Too much relief. She should be more composed.

“I am back.” He moved to sit beside her on the stone bench, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him through the fabric of her sleeve. “Did you miss me?”

The question was light, teasing. But his eyes held hers with an intensity that made her breath catch.

“The days felt longer without you.” The admission escaped before she could stop it.

“Did they?” His smile deepened. “Then perhaps I should not leave again.”

“Perhaps you should not.”

The words hung between them. She should look away. Should remember that Mira sat on the next bench over, needle in hand, watching without appearing to watch. Should remember propriety, decorum, all the rules that governed what a princess could say to a man who was not yet her husband.

But his gaze held hers, and she could not look away.

“I thought of you,” he said quietly. “While I was gone.”

Her pulse stuttered. “Did you?”

“Often.” He did not look away. “More often than I expected.”

She wanted to ask what that meant. Wanted to pick apart every word, to understand exactly what he was telling her. But his hand found hers on the bench between them, his fingers curving around her palm, and the question dissolved.

They sat like that for a long moment. His thumb traced slow circles on the back of her hand. The spring air was sweet with blossoms. Somewhere, a bird was singing.

This, she thought. This is what I want. This is what I have been waiting for without knowing I was waiting.

“I have something for you,” he said at last. He released her hand, reached into his coat, and withdrew a small velvet pouch. “I saw it in a jeweller’s window and thought of you.”

Inside was a hairpin. Delicate silver filigree, set with tiny dark stones that caught the light like captured shadow.

“It’s beautiful,” she breathed.

“May I?”

She nodded. He rose and moved behind her, his fingers brushing her hair as he slid the pin into place. The touch was brief, proper, nothing more than what a friend might do.

But his fingertips lingered at her temple for just a moment too long. And when he returned to sit beside her, his eyes moved over her face with something that looked almost like yearning.

“There,” he said softly. “Now you match.”

“Match what?”

His smile was a secret. “Something I have been thinking of.”

She did not know what to say. Her cheeks were warm. Her pulse thrummed. She should say something clever, something that would restore the proper distance between them.

Instead, she found herself leaning slightly toward him. Drawn by gravity she could not name.

A footstep on the gravel path. Mira, rising from her bench, her expression carefully blank.

“Your Imperial Highness. Forgive me. There is commotion at the palace.”

The moment shattered. Ilyra drew back, composing her features. Evander rose smoothly, offering his hand to help her stand.

“Commotion?” Ilyra asked.

“A rider has arrived.” Mira’s voice was strange. Tight. “From the east.”

The mud-splattered rider arrived just before midday.

Ilyra was in the great hall’s antechamber, reviewing correspondence with one of her father’s secretaries, when the commotion began. Raised voices at the entrance. The clatter of boots on marble. A man in travel-stained clothes pushed through the gathered courtiers, his face grey with exhaustion.

Grey with fear.

She heard the words in fragments, catching drifting through the air like butterflies: “…on the road…” “…bandits…” “…no survivors…”

Her hands clenched. The leather creaked.

No.

The messenger was ushered toward the Emperor’s private chambers, but the damage was done. The whispers spread like fire through dry grass, leaping from courtier to courtier, each repetition adding new horrors. Prince Dorian. The exile convoy. Attacked on the road. No one left alive.

Ilyra could not move. Her body had turned to stone, rooted to the marble floor while the world continued around her.

No. I wanted exile, not…

Cassian appeared in the doorway. His face was bloodless, his dark eyes fixed on nothing. He looked through her, and she understood that he already knew.

“Dorian.” His voice cracked on the name.

She opened her mouth to say something. Comfort. Denial. Anything. But no words came.

Alistair strode past them both, jaw set, already moving toward the council chambers. His expression was calculating. Political. Adding up implications, measuring responses, thinking three steps ahead while his brother’s body cooled on a distant road.

Seraine made a holy symbol in the old way, murmuring prayers under her breath. “The Light reveals all sin.” Her lips curved. “Even unto the ends of the earth.”

A courtier approached Ilyra with condolences, her face arranged in appropriate sympathy. Ilyra heard herself responding. The right words. The proper phrases. Her voice came from very far away.

“Such a tragedy, Your Imperial Highness. To die so far from home…”

“Yes. A tragedy.”

I did not want this. I did not want him to die.

She searched the crowd for Evander. His dark head, his steady presence, the calm that radiated from him like heat from banked coals. He would know what to say. He would make sense of this.

But he was nowhere.

She found him an hour later, in the small salon where they often met.

He was standing by the window, silhouetted against the pale afternoon light. Mira sat in her usual corner, needle and thread in hand, though her fingers had stilled. He did not turn when Ilyra entered, but his shoulders shifted. He had been expecting her.

She crossed the room without speaking. Without thinking. Her hands found his sleeve and gripped, the leather of her gloves creaking against the fabric.

“He’s dead.”

The words came out broken. She had not meant for them to break.

“I know.” Evander turned, his expression grave. “I heard. I came as soon as I could.”

“Bandits. On the road.” She was shaking. She could not stop shaking. “I sent him there. I put him on that road.”

“Ilyra.” His hands settled on her shoulders. “Look at me.”

She looked. His eyes were dark and calm, an anchor in the storm tearing through her chest.

“You did not send him anywhere. The court did. The council. Your father.”

“Because of what I did.” The truth tasted like mud. “I exposed him. I made him vulnerable. And now he’s dead.”

“You are grieving. Grief makes us claim responsibility we do not bear.” Evander’s voice was gentle. “Dorian made his own enemies. Years of debts. Men in every gaming house who saw profit in his misfortune. The roads have always been dangerous for men with prices on their heads.”

She wanted to argue. Wanted to claim the guilt that felt like it belonged to her. But his words made a terrible kind of sense. Dorian had always lived recklessly. Had always courted danger with the confidence of a man who believed consequences were for other people.

“Your pain is real,” Evander continued. “Allow yourself to feel it. But do not mistake grief for guilt.”

She did know. Everyone knew.

“I keep seeing his face,” she whispered. “At the trial. He looked so confused.”

“He was.” Evander’s thumb traced a small circle on her shoulder. “He spent his whole life protected from consequences. When they finally arrived, he had no framework for understanding them. That is not your fault. That is who he was.”

She leaned into his touch. It was easier than standing alone.

In the corner, Mira’s needle had stopped entirely. Her head was seemingly bowed over her work, but she was not sewing. She was watching.

“What do I do now?” she asked.

“You grieve. You let the court settle.” His hand moved from her shoulder to her back, a grounding pressure. “And you remember that you are not responsible for every tragedy that follows every choice you make. The world is cruel. Sometimes crueller than we intend.”

Crueller than we intend. The words lodged somewhere beneath her ribs.

“Cassian will be grieving too,” Evander added quietly. “He may become difficult. And your other siblings will be watching - reassessing. Be careful in the coming weeks.”

It was practical advice. The kind of counsel anyone might offer after a family tragedy. She filed it away, grateful for something solid to hold onto.

“Stay with me,” she said. The words escaped before she could stop them. “Tonight. I don’t want to be alone.”

“Of course.” His voice was soft. “I am not going anywhere.”

That night, she could not sleep.

When she rose and wrapped herself in a dressing gown, Mira appeared at her door within moments, already dressed, as if she had been waiting.

“Your Highness?”

“I need to walk.” Ilyra did not explain further. She did not need to.

Mira followed three paces behind as they moved through the empty palace halls. The servants had retired, the guards stationed at their distant posts. Their footsteps echoed on the marble floors. Moonlight streamed through the tall windows, casting silver patterns across the portraits of her ancestors.

They watched her pass. Generation after generation of Aurelius rulers, their painted eyes following her through their hall. The First Empress. The Conqueror. The Builder. All the great names of her line, preserved in oil and canvas and gold leaf.

Did any of them kill their brothers?

She stopped before her grandfather’s portrait. He had consolidated power through strategic marriages and convenient deaths. Her grandmother’s portrait hung beside his, her expression serene. They had been partners, the histories said. A formidable team.

How many of those convenient deaths were truly convenient?

The histories never said. The histories were written by the victors, and the victors did not dwell on the cost of their victories. They spoke of necessity. Of duty. Of the hard choices that built empires.

She looked at her grandmother’s face. Serene. Composed. A woman who had stood beside the Conqueror through thirty years of rule, who had borne him seven children, who had watched three of them die before they reached adulthood. Disease, the histories said. Accidents. Misfortune.

What did you tell yourself? Ilyra wondered. What stories made it bearable?

The painted eyes offered no answers. They never did.

She walked on. Past the Builder, who had expanded the empire’s borders through diplomacy and carefully targeted violence. Past the Peacemaker, whose reign had been marked by purges disguised as reconciliation. Past empress after emperor, each face composed in the serene confidence of those who had never doubted their right to rule.

What kind of person does this make me?

The question had no answer. Or perhaps too many. She was the youngest daughter. The bookworm who had never been meant for anything but a strategic marriage and a quiet life in some distant province.

Now she was something else. Something she did not yet have a name for.

Behind her, Mira’s footsteps were soft on the marble. Patient. Waiting. The maid had heard everything tonight - the grief, the guilt, the comfort that had felt too much like absolution. She would remember. She always remembered.

Is that who you want to be? Evander had asked about the invisible princess. Powerless. Waiting for someone else to decide your fate.

No. She did not want to be that person anymore.

But she was not certain she wanted to be this one either.

She stopped at the end of the gallery, where the moonlight pooled on the floor like spilled milk. Her grandfather’s portrait watched from behind her. Her grandmother’s serene face. All the hard-eyed rulers who had built this empire one difficult choice at a time.

You did what was necessary, she told herself. What was right.

The words felt hollow. But they were all she had.

“Your Highness?” Mira’s voice was soft. “The night grows cold.”

Ilyra looked back at her ancestors one last time. Then she turned and walked back toward her chambers, her shadow stretching long behind her on the marble floor.

The weeks that followed were a blur of black crepe and formal mourning.

Evander was there. Always there. In the mornings, walking with her through the grey spring gardens while the court observed the prescribed rituals of grief. In the afternoons, sitting with her in the small salon while she stared at books she did not read. In the evenings, a steady presence at her side through the interminable dinners where no one spoke of Dorian but everyone thought of nothing else.

He did not press her. Did not demand conversation or forced cheerfulness. He simply stayed. His presence a quiet anchor in the storm of her guilt.

And slowly, day by day, she began to notice other things.

The way his hand found hers when no one was looking, his fingers threading through hers with an intimacy that felt like a secret. The way his eyes lingered on her face when he thought she was not watching. The way he leaned toward her when they spoke, as if drawn by some invisible thread.

One evening, a week into the mourning period, they sat together in her salon while the rain streaked the windows and Mira’s needle moved steadily in the corner. Evander was reading aloud from a book of poetry, something melancholy and beautiful that he had chosen without explanation.

His voice was low, musical. She watched his mouth form the words and felt awareness bloom in her chest.

I love him.

The thought arrived without warning. Clear and undeniable. She loved him. She had been falling for weeks, perhaps longer, and only now did she have the word for it.

He glanced up and caught her watching. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” She looked away, her cheeks warming. “Your voice is… pleasant.”

“Pleasant.” His smile was amused. “High praise indeed.”

“I am not skilled at flattery.”

“No.” He set the book aside and moved closer on the settee. Close enough that their shoulders brushed. “That is one of the things I find myself drawn to.”

“What else?” she heard herself ask.

He tilted his head, considering. The lamplight caught in his gaze and made it gleam.

“Your mind,” he said. “The way you see things others miss. The questions you ask that no one else thinks to ask.” A pause. “The way you look at me when you think I am not watching.”

Her breath caught. “I don’t…”

“You do.” His voice was soft, almost tender. “And I find myself watching you in return. More than is wise. More than I intended.”

More than I intended. The words wrapped around her like silk.

“Is that a confession?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Perhaps.” His fingers found her chin, tilting her face toward his. “Perhaps it is something else.”

She did not know who leaned in first. Only that suddenly his face was very close, his breath warm against her lips, and her blood rushed so loudly in her ears she was certain he could hear it.

A rustle from the corner. Mira, shifting in her seat.

Evander drew back. His expression was composed, but something flickered in his eyes. Frustration, perhaps. Or something else.

“We should not…” he began.

“No.” She was breathless. “We should not.”

But she wanted to. She wanted to with a ferocity that frightened her.

He rose, offering his hand to help her stand. His fingers lingered on hers.

“Soon,” he said quietly. “There will be time for this. But not yet.”

“Not yet,” she echoed.

But when he left that evening, her lips still tingled with the kiss that had not quite happened. And she lay awake for hours, wondering what soon meant, and how she would survive the waiting.

The formal mourning period ended two weeks after Dorian’s death.

The court emerged from its cocoon of black crepe with unseemly haste, eager for distraction. Spring was in full bloom now, the gardens rioting with colour, the air sweet with blossoms and possibility. A new season. Fresh intrigues. Fresh scandals to replace the old.

Evander found her in the private alcove where she had retreated from the suddenly vibrant court. The flowering hedges screened them from view. Mira sat on a bench nearby, her embroidery in her lap, granting her mistress the illusion of solitude while remaining within sight.

“Walk with me?” he asked.

They walked. Mira rose and followed at a discreet distance. Ilyra untied her bonnet as they moved deeper into the garden’s privacy. Past the ornamental fountains, past the rose arbour where courtiers gathered for afternoon gossip, into the quieter reaches where the paths grew narrow and the hedges grew tall. Behind them, Mira’s footsteps were soft on the gravel.

The spring sun was warm on her face. Somewhere, a fountain splashed. The world smelled of flowers and possibility.

Evander stopped walking.

She turned to face him, a question forming on her lips. But something in his expression made the words die unspoken.

He was looking at her as if he had never seen her before. As if he was seeing something new, something that surprised even him.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I have been thinking,” he said slowly, “about what comes next.”

“The succession?”

“Us.” He stepped closer. Close enough that she could see the flecks of gold in his dark eyes, the barest hint of crimson in his hair, the slight tension at the corner of his mouth. “About our future. What we might build together.”

Her heart began to pound. The world narrowed to the space between them.

“Evander…”

“Let me finish.” His voice was low, intent. “I have spent a very long time searching for something. Someone.” He paused, and his gaze moved over her face with an intensity that made her breath catch. “When I imagine the future now, you are in it. Always.”

The words wrapped around her heart and squeezed.

“I see who you are becoming,” he continued, his voice soft. “The strength beneath the gentleness. The steel beneath the silk. You are not the woman I expected to find here. You are something… more.” His hand rose to cup her cheek, his thumb brushing along her jaw with impossible tenderness. “I would stand beside you through whatever comes next. If you would have me.”

She could not speak. Could not think. The world had collapsed to the pressure of his hand on her face, the depth of his gaze, the way he was looking at her as if she were the answer to a question he had been asking for years.

“Are you…” Her voice came out unsteady. “Is this…”

“I am asking you to be my wife.”

The words fell like stones into still water. She felt the ripples spreading outward through her whole body.

His wife.

She should hesitate. Should question the timing. Her brother was barely cold in his grave, and here was Evander, speaking of futures and partnership and standing beside her.

But he was the only one who understood. The only one who did not judge her for what had happened to Dorian. The only one who saw her guilt and called it something else entirely.

And she loved him. She knew that now with a certainty that left no room for doubt.

“Yes.” The word escaped before she could stop it, too eager, too raw. “Yes. Please. Yes.”

His smile was everything. Warm and genuine and so full of something excessively joyful that her eyes burned with sudden tears. He drew a ring from his pocket. Simple gold, a single dark stone that caught the light like captured shadow.

“May I?”

Her hands were shaking as she peeled off her left glove. She watched, hardly daring to breathe, as he took her bare hand in his. His skin was warm against hers. The first time he had touched her without the barrier of leather between them.

He slid the ring onto her finger. The metal was cool against her skin, then warm, then it simply belonged there, as if it had always been waiting for her.

“There,” he said softly. “You are mine.”

The words should have sounded possessive. Instead, they sounded like a promise. Like a vow. Like everything she had ever wanted to hear.

She laughed, the sound bubbling up from somewhere deep in her chest. Relief. Joy. The overwhelming impossibility of this moment.

“I am going to cry,” she warned him.

“Then cry.” His thumb brushed away the tear that had already escaped. “I will wait.”

She did not cry. Instead, she stared at the ring on her finger, watching the dark stone catch the light, and felt as if she were standing on the edge of a new world.

Behind them, Mira’s footsteps had stopped. She stood at a respectful distance, her expression unreadable.

Evander offered Ilyra his arm. “Shall we tell the court?”

“Not yet.” She surprised herself with the words. “Can we… can we just have a moment? Before everyone knows?”

His expression softened. “Of course.”

They walked deeper into the garden, her hand on his arm, the ring glinting on her finger. The hedges closed around them like a secret. Mira followed, but at such a distance that they might almost have been alone.

“Tell me something,” Ilyra said. “Something true.”

He glanced at her. “Such as?”

“Why me?” The question she had been afraid to ask for weeks. “You could have anyone. Why the forgotten princess?”

He was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was low and serious.

“Because you are not forgotten. Not to me.” His hand covered hers where it rested on his arm. “Because when I am with you, I am… present. In a way I had not been for a very long time.” He paused. “Because you make me want things I had stopped wanting.”

“I love you,” she said. The words came easily, naturally, as if she had been saying them forever. “I think I have loved you since the library. Since you looked at me and saw someone worth teaching.”

He stopped walking. Turned to face her. His expression was strange, tender and something else, something she could not name.

“You honour me,” he said quietly.

“That is not an answer.”

“No.” His smile was soft. “It is not.”

She should press him. Should demand the words, the reciprocation, the declaration she had just offered. But he was looking at her with such warmth, such intensity, that it felt unnecessary. He might not say the words, but surely she could see the truth in his eyes.

Surely this was love. What else could it be?

The announcement was made that evening in the great hall.

The court assembled in their finest. Gauze over satin, blonde lace at every cuff, the shimmer of silk net catching the candlelight, alerted by whispers and rumours of significance. Ilyra stood beside Evander on the raised dais, her parents seated on their thrones behind them, their expressions carefully neutral.

“His Grace Evander Corvin, Archduke of Esthold,” the herald announced, “is pleased to declare his engagement to Her Imperial Highness Princess Ilyra of the House Aurelios.”

The hall erupted in applause. Genuine or performed, it hardly mattered. The court was hungry for celebration after weeks of scandal and death. A royal engagement was exactly the distraction they craved.

Ilyra smiled. She could not stop smiling. Her face ached with it, and still she smiled.

She accepted congratulations. She moved through the crowd on Evander’s arm, responding to well-wishes with a grace that came easily now. Her voice was steady. Her expression radiant.

Inside, she was fizzing. Champagne bubbles in her blood. Joy so sharp it felt like pain.

She kept glancing at her hand. The ring. The dark stone that caught every light in the room and threw it back transformed. His ring. On my finger. I am going to be his wife.

Cassian stood in a corner, his face grey and hollow. He did not approach her. Did not offer congratulations. Just watched with eyes that held grief. Or suspicion. Or both.

She felt a flicker of guilt, quickly suppressed. This was her moment. Her happiness. She would not let Cassian’s grief steal it from her.

Seraine blessed the union with elaborate prayers, her satisfaction barely concealed beneath pious words. Alistair clasped Evander’s hand with professional warmth, already calculating the political implications.

And through it all, Evander stayed beside her. His hand on the small of her back. His presence constant. Hers.

Later, when the celebration had wound down and the court had retired, she received him in her private salon. Mira waited in her corner, exhausted but present, the embroidery frame before her more pretence than occupation. Even an engaged couple required a chaperone. For now.

But not forever. Soon they would be married. Soon there would be no barriers between them at all.

Ilyra stood at the window watching the moonlight silver the gardens below. The same gardens where he had proposed. The same moon that had witnessed their conversation in the gallery.

Evander’s reflection appeared behind hers in the dark glass.

“Regrets?” he asked.

“None.” She turned to face him, smiling. “Not a single one.”

“You are certain?”

“I have never been more certain of anything in my life.”

He moved to stand beside her at the window, maintaining the careful distance that propriety demanded. But his eyes held hers with an intensity that made propriety feel like a suggestion rather than a rule.

“I meant what I said,” he told her quietly. “In the garden. Every word.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” His hand found hers, their fingers threading together. “I am not skilled at… at the words people expect, at telling them what they want to hear. But what I feel for you is true. I hope you know that.”

What I feel for you is true.

He still had not said love. But surely this was close enough. Surely the feeling mattered more than the word.

“I know,” she said again. And this time, she meant it completely.

He lifted her hand to his lips. The kiss was soft, lingering, pressed to her knuckles above the ring. When he released her, her skin tingled where his mouth had been.

“Until tomorrow,” he said.

“Until tomorrow.”

But he did not leave immediately. He stood there, looking at her in the moonlight, his expression soft with something inscrutable.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

“That I am very fortunate.” His voice was low. “That I did not expect to find this. Find you.”

She smiled.

He smiled back. And for a moment, standing there in the silver light with his hand in hers and the ring glinting on her finger, she believed that everything would be exactly as she had imagined.

When he finally left, Mira rising to see him to the door, Ilyra stayed at the window. She held her hand up to the moonlight, watching the dark stone catch the silver glow. Turned it this way and that. Let herself feel the weight of it, the reality of it, the promise it represented.

I am going to be his wife.

The thought sent a thrill through her that was almost physical. She pressed her hand to her chest, feeling her heart pound beneath her palm.

She was engaged. To a man who looked at her the way Evander looked at her. A man who had searched for something and found her. A man who made her feel seen, and valued, and loved.

Loved. The word wrapped around her like a blanket.

He had not said it. But surely he felt it. How could he not, with the way he touched her? The way he looked at her? The way he had trembled, just slightly, when he slid the ring onto her finger?

She smiled into the darkness. Outside, the moonlight silvered the gardens. Inside, her heart sang.

This is love, she told herself. This is what it feels like to be chosen.

She climbed into bed still wearing the ring. Could not bear to take it off. Lay in the darkness with her hand pressed to her heart, feeling the cool metal warm against her skin.

Tomorrow she would face the court. The whispers. The complications. Cassian’s grief. Seraine’s calculations. Alistair’s political assessments.

But tonight, she was simply happy.

For the first time in her life, unconditionally, unreservedly happy.

And she fell asleep smiling, dreaming of a future that gleamed like the dark stone on her finger, full of promise and possibility and the man she loved.