“Are you ready, My Lady?” I asked as we disembarked from the airship near Leon Karnak. She nodded apprehensively, and I gave her hand a squeeze. “Good. Then let’s go.”

We approached the tower slowly, both of us fearing what we might find. As always, there was no one—human or monster—in sight. The monsters that populated the tower always avoided the ground level, though I had yet to comprehend why.

Standing before the massive, tightly sealed door at the base of the tower, we gazed up at the names written in the ancient script near the top once again. “I would think the most likely place for her to have buried the first page would be right here, below our names. Will you help me look for it, My Lady?”

“Of course,” she replied, kneeling on the ground before the door and starting to dig.

After digging for some time, I hit something solid. “It’s here!” I exclaimed, scraping the earth away from around the chest. “Damn. I’m shaking so hard, I can’t pick it up.”

“Do you want me to get it for you?” she asked.

“No, but thank you. I need to finish this myself. Just give me a minute.” I steeled my nerves and steadied my hands, then carefully picked up the small chest. When I opened it, there was another page inside. Feeling shaky again, I lifted the paper out of the chest. Handing the chest to Avani, I looked at that solitary page. I saw that in the bottom corner was a dot—this, then, as we had surmised, was the first page.

I took a deep breath and glanced up at her. “All right. Here we go. It says… Dear ‘you’ who lies sleeping within the tower—‘she’ who broke her promise to you has vanished. For at last ‘she’ found herself a loving husband, and was reborn as ‘me’. Because of this, I wish now to put an end to the heartache and pain between ‘you’ and ‘she’ by dedicating this story to you. That way when you finally awaken one day, you’ll know all that transpired. Then, dear man, you will know that you have been freed from our childish promise. I’m sorry that I couldn’t keep it, after all. Fare thee well.” I felt tears pricking my eyes as I looked at the text that came next. “Then she adds a post-script, saying that at the suggestion of a friend, she plans to publish a book... the title of which is The Recipe for Happiness.”

Avani gasped. “That—isn’t that the book…?”

“Yes, that’s the book I translated not long after we started seeing each other. She also says that she hopes one day I find it—that she’s certain I will do so—and that she’s writing it in the old script that we learned together as children. She says that she hopes I’ll enjoy reading it all the more because of that. Then she says… she says ‘To you, my dear man, through the passage of years, centuries, even millennia… I send you my wish upon a star, for you were my first love, though not my last.’” I set the page back in the chest, and Avani gently closed the lid. “The Recipe for Happiness. It was the story of a happily married couple. And I remember… how I could sense the joy overflowing from the author through her words.”

“Then that means….”

“It means that ‘she’ really did disappear here. She broke her promise and found someone else. She didn’t die miserable and alone—she… she had a happy life, after all.” Joy and relief filled me, the excess flowing from my eyes as tears. I sighed, leaning against the door and closing my eyes for a moment. “A wish upon a star….”

“Wasn’t that… wasn’t that part of the hint to find the last page?” Avani asked.

I opened my eyes and looked at her in surprise. “Yes, now you mention it. You’re right.” I laughed. “How could I have forgotten about that? Wishing on stars. It was a charm from my childhood—a kind of magic to send a wish to the heavens. The first page started with that dot, and then point by point she turned it into a star. I remember it now—it was supposed to make your wish come true. Everything—the story, the symbols, the locations… all of it was her gift to me, to both of us, so that our wishes might come true. It was… her blessing.”

I looked up again at our names and laughed. “That dear, sweet, silly girl. She has nothing to be sorry for. I’m the one who should be apologizing, not her.” I reached up to trace over her name with my finger. “I’m so glad you found your happiness, Maria. I promise, your wish will not be wasted,” I whispered.

I turned to look at Avani. She stood watching me, glad tears shining in her eyes, and my heart gave a hard thump and my throat constricted as I looked at her. She was somehow so strong, yet so vulnerable. So brave, yet so shy. She was a mass of contradictions, and… I loved her. I felt my spirits soar as I realized that I could allow myself to feel that now—I could even say the words. I reached for her and pulled her to me, caressing her cheek as I gazed into her dewy green eyes.

“I promise… I will stay by your side. I will protect you,” I murmured, and she threw her arms around me and held me tightly. “I can finally look you straight in the eyes.” Then I pulled away. “No. To be honest, I’ve been deceiving myself ever since our relationship began. I’ve… I’ve been afraid. Afraid to accept the truth. Afraid of the consequences. And so I never could really face you. Even… even when I was with you—my heart was elsewhere.”

She smiled sadly up at me. “I understand, Leo. It… it was the more or less the same for me.”

I opened my eyes wide, caught off guard by her words. “What? It was?”

“Right from the start, I hid away my true feelings. Remember you asked me if I was okay with the terms of our relationship—that you could never completely be with me—and I said I was? I was deceiving myself, too. How could I be okay with that? How could I be satisfied, let alone happy, knowing that your heart was bound and that you were in pain? It wasn’t because you wouldn’t marry me, honest—that never really mattered to me, not very much anyway. I only wanted to be with you. But I just couldn’t bear that I was causing you grief.

“So I locked my true feelings away deep inside me, and I tried to pretend that things weren’t so very serious between us. Poor Dylas—truthfully, it was all over with him from the moment I first saw you. I was so selfish. But… after you said that you couldn’t truly be with me, I couldn’t bring myself to be honest enough to give him his freedom or to give you my undivided affection. I thought maybe then… maybe that it would make it easier for you… and for me. And besides, I was… I was afraid, too.

“This is the first time I’ve been able to look you in the eyes and admit all that to you. Not that I actually lied before, more just that I didn’t tell you everything. So… I’d like to start over. A clean slate. A fresh start, together with you.”

I smiled at her as I took in her words. “A fresh start… yes, I like that idea. Now I feel like I can finally be with you—completely and entirely, in mind, body, and spirit.”

“Same here,” she said, standing on tip-toe to give me a kiss.

“Oh, that reminds me of something… ‘Welcome home, My Lady.’”

She grinned at me, and replied, “‘I’m home, Leo!’”

I touched the tip of her nose with my finger as I smiled again at her. “Hey, you remember what you were saying a moment ago, about when we first started seeing each other? You know, when I told you that I could never truly be with you, and you said you were fine with it, even though really you weren’t.” She nodded, looking questioningly at me. “I never want to break another promise again, My Lady. But… sadly, as things are right now… I still can’t truly be with you.”

She looked startled and more than a little stricken. “What? Wh…”

“That’s why,” I interrupted, as I pulled her tightly to me, “you should marry me.”

She gasped, pulling back to look up at me—uncertain if I was serious or not.

“We’re two different people, so of course we can’t be completely together. So marry me—become as one with me in mind, body, and spirit.”

“But that… that doesn’t even make sense!” she exclaimed, flustered by my unexpected proposal.

“No, perhaps not. But as you said, love is a paradox. I love you, My Lady, with all my heart and soul, more than I’ve ever loved before. I’m finally free to admit that to myself—and to say it to you—even though I’ve known it since I first set eyes on you, here in this tower.” Deferring to the expected standard of behavior for such an occasion, I then dropped down on one knee before her and took her hands in mine. I looked up into her eyes, and I said, “I want you for my wife, Avani. Will you marry me?”

She looked down at me, tears glistening in her eyes, and my heart skipped a beat—uncertain if they were tears of joy or sorrow.

Then she knelt down and wrapped her arms tightly around me as she whispered into my ear, “Yes, Leo. I’ll marry you.”