She is up and finishing her spell prep and there are speeches to be reviewed and approved and seating assignments to juggle and weather-mages to coordinate to make sure it's nice out and samples from the caterers to be approved-of and security measures to try to think of loopholes in.

Leareth is noticeably more relaxed and cheerful about the work; he's actually able to somewhat enjoy the interesting-problem-solving aspects. He glances at Carissa often with fondness and appreciation. 

She is glad he had a lovely date night. Really. Mostly.

It's a very very long day made possible only by their rings of sustenance but nothing is on fire by the end of it and the party seems to have all of the requisite elements and no one's been left out of it who is likely to hold a grudge for a decade and they are in possession of clothes, food, and wedding rings.

Seems pretty reasonable. 

Leareth checks the planning list one final time, two hours before dawn. Satisfies himself that all the necessary pieces and many of the bonus ones have been dealt with. 

When they head to bed, he holds Carissa tightly. By the end of tomorrow they'll be married and the thought is, at this point, only a teensy bit overwhelming. 

She has stupid terrible dreams about being executed and about being tortured into someone better, unclear whether by Hell or Heaven, and about Leareth but actually he is, by stipulation, evil and going to hurt her, he doesn't do anything but still. 

She still wakes up rested, because rings of sustenance are great.

Doesn't really know what spells to pray for. Just kind of prays, generally, for longer than usual, and when she stands up she has a bunch of Remove Fear and Grace and Eagle's Splendour and Blessings of Courage and Life and Blessings of Luck and Resolve.

...she's never not asked for specific spells before and didn't know you get them anyway. It feels significantly more intimate, somehow, if Iomedae chose them. She sits there blushing and wondering if that always works or just this once.

Leareth has formless dreams of unspecified Bad Things happening to Carissa, sometimes while he's not looking because he's distracted looking at food or flowers, sometimes because he's in the middle of a conversation with Khemet, sometimes right in front of him but he's paralyzed and can't do anything. In one of them, Starwind and Moondance turn up with some sort of elaborate wedding-blessing spell, and with the doomy certainty of dream logic, he has to let them get up and give a speech even though he knows that Starwind is going to reach into his robes and draw out the weapon - and they get both of them, this time, but the demons eat Carissa first. 

He wakes up a little before dawn and, unusually for him, stays in bed with his eyes half-lidded, focusing on uncovering all the spots of tension trying to sneak up in his body and nudging them loose again. 

He prays for his spells and asks for the usual ones that boost his Velgarth magic, and Fly, because even five minutes of flight is in fact useful if something awful happens to Carissa during the wedding. Which it hopefully won't because they've been very thoughtful and careful. 

Then he keeps leaning into the sense of Abadar's presence, longer than he strictly needs to, just drawing reassurance from that feeling of being seen by something much bigger than himself. 

She puts on her dress. Warns him that she's going to let the people in to do her hair and her face. They did this yesterday as practice and it looked very pretty. A little bit unreal but maybe it's the situation that's a little bit unclear.

Leareth thinks she looks wonderful in the dress, and says so. 

He is almost contractually obligated to say that, she points out, and sits still for people to do things to her hair.

Leareth has escaped the need to have things done to his hair, so he spends the time Mindspeaking with Taver and Nayoki and going through his list one more time; he's arranged so he shouldn't have to personally do anything or talk to anyone about the various logistics today, but he still feels like he should check in. 

Eventually Nayoki tells him to stop being annoying and focus on the part where he's getting married. (Nayoki thinks this is kind of hilarious, which shows.) 

"Have they caught all the assassins? I hired three, just to keep security on their toes." Her tone is joking.

Leareth is, at this point, reasonably accurate at telling when she's joking. "Oh, was that you?" he teases back. "We had all assumed it was Aroden's mortal enemies in Rahadoum." (Aroden does not in fact have mortal enemies in Rahadoum; some people were disgruntled but voting on his official status as kind of an asshole was the worst of it.) 

"Well, that is where I hired them. It was very easy. Just stood in the street yelling "who wants to assassinate Aroden?" and got quite a crowd. It was hard to pick just three."

"Clearly you had an even more productive week than I had realized." It's mildly frustrating that he can't kiss her right now because she has people doing her face. Soon, he tells himself. 

Soon they can go on over to the church for the contract signing! The contract is ten pages long, most of them just stipulating in various ways that she cannot run off with half of, or for that matter any of, the country in a divorce. The part that has to be spoken aloud is shorter and doesn't mention divorce at all because that's not very romantic. She affirms that she has read the contract and had independent advice on it and is marrying him of her own free will and means to stay with him and have his children and seek glory together in this life and the next (should that come up, which it hopefully won't).

It's weird how real and meaningful all of that feels to hear said out loud to him. None of it's a surprise, he's read through the contract multiple times. (And, somewhat to his surprise, Vanyel spontaneously offered to help him review it, and was helpful.) 

He speaks his own part, looking at her, trying to be relaxed and non-scary. 

She's not scared but that's maybe because she's abusing the spell Iomedae gave her at least until they're through all the parts where everyone is watching them. Most of what will happen is the party, she's not scared about the party. It will just involve lots of tedious stressful talking to people who she is not even marrying. 

Leareth isn't scared. He feels very alert, focused, vigilant; it's not quite the same sharp-edged crystalline feeling he gets from battle-nerves but it's in that direction.

He's going to be so tired by the end of the day, if it's all like this. And he can't wait for when he's allowed to kiss his wife and scoop her up and Gate her to Aktun, where he can relax because it's not in Abadar's interest to let anything bad happen to them. But, first, formalities in front of everyone and then party. 

He almost Mindspeaks Nayoki to check that the illusion-theatre people are getting all of this for later showing elsewhere, and then remembers that she'll probably just tell him off again. 

He Mindspeaks him during the party to tell him to check out his present from Urtho, which was handed over to the staff along with all the other presents but which is, Khemet suspects, the one likeliest to actually improve Leareth's wedding day instead of just being nice in the abstract.

Leareth thanks him for the head's-up and goes to do that.

He's so impressed! :How did he even make this in two weeks– Oh, did you get access to Aroden's time dilation for him?: 

:Yes. For mine, too, it took a lot of doing to find a magic item Aroden probably hadn't already given you both.:

:I am sorry for giving you such a difficult job of present-choosing. I think I will save yours for when I am undistracted enough to appreciate it properly: 

He finds Carissa, who's talking to different important people neither of them had heard of before last week, and shows her the shield-at-a-distance paired bracelets, which in addition to being an incredibly impressive magic working, are also pretty. 

"What does it do?"

"It lets me cast the same kind of personal shields I do for myself, on you, with the same efficiency. Any kind of shield. And I can sense damage to them as though it were my own shields, and reinforce them if we are under attack. This is an incredibly impressive invention. Urtho made it, apparently, in Aroden's time-dilation demiplane."