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ALTHOUGH I TRIED hard to be alert to every detail of the
rest of the ceremony, time seemed to speed up after Lucius
and I said those words of acceptance, and I succeeded in
capturing only little moments here and there, such as the
instant when Mindy passed my cup to me so I could share my
blood with Lucius, and the way he closed his eyes before he
drank.
At one point, I also managed to finally really notice
Raniero—and discovered that Lucius had somehow gotten
his best man cleaned up, so he looked suitable for a wedding.
Mindy seemed to have appreciated the change, too. When I
looked at her, I saw a familiar gleam in her eyes, as if she
didn’t think her “date” was so bad after all.
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Then, suddenly, it was time for Alexandru to open the
genealogy that Lucius had shown me months ago in my
parents’ garage apartment.
As the ancient vampire slid the book across the stone table
so I could sign my name next to my new husband’s, I briefly
wondered if Lucius might actually get a little misty, given
how he prized his family history.
Of course, he didn’t shed any tears, but right before I put
the heavy gold pen to the yellowed paper, I glanced over my
shoulder to see my dad weeping and my mom looking a little
emotional, too. I also found Dorin, whose eyes were lit up
with the history of the act.
And—just as I turned back around—I caught a glimpse
of Claudiu staring up at the sky, arms crossed, as if he couldn’t bear to see the name “Dragomir” entered permanently into
the long line of Vladescus.
All of those things went by so quickly, up until the
moment Lucius slipped a wedding band onto my finger, then
held out his left hand to me. And as I took his cool fingers in
mine, I saw that he was sort of laughing, the tension gone.
I almost started laughing too. Maybe because the rings...They hardly seemed important, at that point. We’d been
husband and wife since we’d spoken our vows and didn’t need
jewelry to prove it. At most, the gold band that I was fumbling
to get onto Lucius’s hand would tell the Bucharest debutantes
to back off. Not that I was worried about anybody stealing
him away. Lucius was mine now, and I was his. It was that
simple.
“I am incredibly happy right now,” Lucius whispered
when his ring was in place. “Incredibly so.”
“Me, too,” I agreed, thinking that the phrase—“incredibly
happy”—wasn’t adequate. For once, even Lucius didn’t seem
have a vocabulary extensive enough to capture how I knew we
were both feeling right then.
Then, as we stood there grinning at each other, Alexandru
Vladescu finally spoke the words I swore I couldn’t wait one
more second to hear. “Lucius, you may kiss your bride.”
Continue to Epilogue...
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