The reception unfolded exactly as Elena had promised it would — two hundred guests, half of them still visibly shaken, watching the bride and groom dance their first dance as husband and wife like nothing at all had happened twenty minutes earlier in a darkened church.
Elena held herself straight in Damian's arms, smiling the smile her father had taught her for rooms exactly like this one, and felt every eye in the reception hall measuring the two of them for cracks that weren't going to show. Damian matched her step for step, his hand steady at her waist, his own composure fitted back into place like armor he'd put on a thousand times before.
"You're doing that thing," he murmured, close to her ear, "where you smile with your whole face except your eyes."
"So are you."
"I learned it f
