“Do you trust me?” she asks.
It’s the easiest question she could’ve asked me.
I pull her in once more, pressing a kiss to her lips. And as I pull away, I whisper, “Always.”
Chapter 59
Maeve
WHEN I OPEN MY EYES, morning sunlight is slipping around the edges of the drapes, sending golden light inching across the pale walls. And for a moment, I don’t know where I am.
Then I remember: I’m home for Yule break, in the childhood bedroom I grew up in.
I shift under the warm blankets and reach under the pillow, where Isis is curled up, still fast asleep. I stroke a fingertip over her head, then sit up slowly and yawn.
My gaze tracks across the room: a bookshelf crammed with books, an old trunk full of childhood memories, the picture of our family that I painted when I was just a girl, still hanging on the wall. The space feels smaller than I remember, like I’ve finally outgrown it.
Downstairs, I can hear movement. It’s probably my stepfather, Edwin. He’s always up before my mother, brewing tea and stoking the fire. But one thing heshouldn’tdo is attempt to make breakfast; he and my mother are both terribleat cooking, which is why Aric and I got good at it when we were growing up. So I should probably get down there and get some food started.
With another yawn, I push the blankets back and swing my legs over the side of the bed. The wooden floor is cold under my bare feet as I walk across the room to my armoire and begin to dress for the day: soft cotton pants, a sweater my grandmother knit for me last Yule, and chunky socks. I move to my vanity and take a seat, intending to brush and braid my hair. As soon as I sit down, I feel a tug in my chest.
Severin.
It feels like he’s calling out to me, saying good morning across the miles of distance between us. And it brings a smile to my face—until I remember what he said up on the Skyreach Spire.
It may extend your lifespan. Beyond what a human life should be.
When he told me the full truth of what he’d learned, I was only somewhat surprised. Somehow, it felt deep inside like I knew this could be a possibility, even before he spoke the words. I was already aware that a permanent fusing of the blood bond could change me, alter the pull of my magic—the pull of myheart. And vampires live for hundreds of years, many more than humans and witches and most other species.
If our bond fuses permanently, it may give me more years with Severin. Decades, even.
But is that what I want? To live such a long life, far beyond what I naturally should?
I pick up my hairbrush and meet my eyes in the vanity mirror as I begin to pull it through my tangled hair, working gently on the snarled strands, smoothing them out.
With each whisper of the brush through my hair, I turn the possibility this way and that, trying to examine it from different angles.
More years. More time. Not just with Severin, but in this world. I’d be alive long enough to watch many more seasons come and go, long enough to see all of those I love grow older... and eventually fade.
The hairbrush stills in my hair.
The concept is difficult to grasp, and the reality of it settles inside my chest.
More time, but a different kind of time. A life that would no longer walk in tandem with those around me.
Once more, my gaze drifts to the painting on the wall: me, my mother, Aric, and Edwin. The lines are uneven, the proportions wrong, the colors bright. A feeling captured in time. And that time feels so far away now, like I’ve already started to outgrow it.
But I suppose we outgrow most things. The only constant in life is change, after all.
And change is coming for me. I’ll graduate from Coven Crest next semester, and after that...
I’m not sure what comes after that. Work with the Arcanum Collective, hopefully. But apart from that, my life is unplanned, open to the wills of fate.
Open to change.
I pull the brush through my hair again, then set it on the vanity as I turn my focus to my reflection in the vanity mirror.
Severin wouldn’t ever force this on me. If we permanently fuse our bond—if he’ll evenallowit—it will be because of me. Itwill be my choice.
