"Marry me?"

Miranda's head snapped up. Exhaustion was making her hallucinate. Matt would never ask her that; not now when they were both exhausted and she was hiding in a borrowed apartment. But Matt sat on the edge of the bed, peering at her as if she were one of his canvasses that held the seeds of a masterpiece if only he could make proper use of line and color.

He shook his head. "Forgive me. I'm going about this all wrong." He slid off the bed and dropped to one knee. Fingers rough from holding charcoal pencils and rifles alike seized her hand. "Miranda Elizabeth Lawson, would you do me the rather considerable honor of becoming my wife?"

Miranda stared. A blast from the cooling unit hit her in the face. Not a hallucination, then. He looked so dreadfully young, so earnest, that a lump formed in Miranda's throat. He wanted to marry her. There were certain truths in the universe. Water was wet. The Council was useless and dictatorial. Matt loved her. And she loved him. But they never spoke of such things. Their relationship was a collection of stolen moments cobbled together between disasters. Speaking of permanence, of the ordinary hardships and joys that marriage implied, was a fool's gamble.

"What brought this on?" she asked at last.

His gaze dropped to the floor. "I can't tell you," he mumbled.

Miranda's eyes narrowed, disbelief replaced by suspicion. "This isn't payback for not telling you why I need your Spectre codes, is it?" Codes I would very much appreciate having, by the way.

"Of course not!" His voice was thick with misery and a bit of defensiveness, the way it was when anyone tried to get him to talk about Mindoir. "I can't tell you, but this is important to me."

She looked down at her hand enveloped in his. They were a pair, weren't they? So much they could never talk about, even to each other. That was part of the trick to making this work; they both knew the other was scarred and had the sense not to poke at the wounds. Only the damn war was changing the rules. First with the Hellhounds and now this.

But marriage would be tempting. To finally meet without having to sneak off to engine rooms or apartments like this one. Lots of people were getting married, rushing to affirm their love before the inevitable claimed them. Starting families like Jacob did, an act of defiance in the face of extinction. Poor idiots, not thinking any of this through, promising forever because they were terrified of not living through the next five minutes.

"Miranda?"

"No," she whispered. "Not like this, Matt. I play for keeps. And everything is so uncertain right now. Ori, the war, everything. If we live through this, ask me then."

His mouth thinned into a tight line, but there was something lost and helpless in his eyes. Still so much the little boy who had lost his parents too early. And she couldn't even promise him that he wouldn't lose her too.

She pecked him on the lips. "This isn't a no. This is 'I don't want to make life-changing decisions because my evolutionary programming is telling me to mate or die.' Ask me when this war is over. I think my answer might be different."

"When this war is over." He rose to his feet, his movements stiff and painful. "I'll… I'll hold you to that Ms. Lawson."

He left. Miranda waited five minutes and followed him out into the Presidium. Brynn had chosen to hide on a desolate planet, but it was far easier to escape Cerberus notice by melting into the throngs of refugees. And it was the easiest place to plan strategies with her colleagues.

Amanda Morley waited at a table at the back of Apollo's. They had joined Cerberus within months of each other and survived Petrovsky's harsh training together. They had left together when the Illusive Man became obsessed with the implants. And now they and the rest of their coterie—her Hellhounds—were working to take Cerberus down.

"Did you get the codes?" Morley asked.

Miranda shook her head. "No. I told you it was a longshot. We'll just have to trace the money the hard way."

"Which is a good way to let your dad and the Illusive Man know we're on to them. They'll be waiting for us, probably with a platoon of those sword-wielding ninjas. I'd say our casualty rate just doubled."

Miranda didn't say anything. Morley was right. The odds that any of them would survive this mission without the element of surprise was remote at best. But what choice did they have? There were rumors that Henry Lawson was the secret to Cerberus' army, that he had found a way to mimic Reaper indoctrination and bend a subject to his will. Rumors only, and not ones that Alliance intel had ever chosen to pass on to anyone who cared to investigate. So she did their job for them.

"Some boyfriend you have," Morley continued. "Figure he'd help us out."

"He would, if I could tell him everything." Matt would break down Henry's door as if he were storming the gates of Hell in truth. He was a brave man, a good man, but not a subtle one. Henry would disappear along with any chance of stopping his research for rescuing Oriana.

"Well, just because he's got a death wish doesn't mean he should want us to get killed too."

Miranda peered at her. "What makes you think he has a death wish?"

"You'd think a Spectre would be better at hiding his calls and search history. He spent all last week researching inheritance law for spacers. Wanted to know if there was a way to avoid most of the estate going to a brother without it being tied up in probate for years. I didn't even know he had a brother."

"Nick. Spends most of his time high on red sand. They don't talk much. But he would be the type to make it ugly for any beneficiaries. The only thing that would automatically take precedence over blood relatives is—"

Ice shot through her. Oh, Matt. "Is a spouse."

"Don't tell me he proposed to you?" Something must have shown on Miranda's face because she broke into a grin. "Let's see the ring."

"I didn't say yes. I don't think he had a ring on him anyway." She buried her face in her hands. So this wasn't some mad impulse. He was planning for his death. A valid marriage would ensure that the apartment on Inter'sai, the paintings that he had made of her that his brother would only see as something he could sell to get his next fix, would go to her instead. To someone who actually had a right to them.

Except she was going to die herself, wasn't she? Their romance would pass unmourned, without a record that it had ever existed. Society would name their closest relatives to be a drug addict and an abusive monster. They were strangers to each other in the eyes of the law.

She was beginning to understand Jacob's rush. "Excuse me."

She found Matt in the apartment he was borrowing from Anderson. His back was to her as he stared at the kaleidoscope of neon lights on the streets below. Miranda bit back a tearful smile. How many times had he snuck up behind her for an embrace? Time to return the favor.

She stalked across the floor and slid her arms around his waist. He was a warm, solid wall of muscle. She could lose herself in that. "I absolutely insist on a ring," she murmured.

He stiffened in surprise. "I—I thought you wanted to wait?"

She kept her voice light and casual. "It would be so much easier now. Taxes. Inheritance. All that nonsense."

The tension in his muscles deepened. He knew that she knew. She turned him to face her. Joy and, yes, pain shone from his eyes in equal measure. She kissed him again, a real kiss this time, trying to say with her mouth and hands what always seemed to stick in her throat.

"Come on," she whispered when she pulled away. "It's back to the fight soon enough. Let's have fun with the time we have left."