Everyone falls silent for a moment as we contemplate the safe life I’m envisaging for myself.
Then Jack snorts, breaking the moment. “Really? You want to be a farmer?” His tone is incredulous. “Don’t you speak a million languages?”
“A half dozen or so, yes. But I’ve also spent my whole life running,” I tell him honestly. “It’s a lonely life. You go from place to place, never belonging anywhere, always the outsider. There’s something incredibly hollow about knowing you can leave a place and know that no one will notice. You can never leave a mark anywhere or make any true friends.”
“Until you do,” Kit says, reaching out to grab my hand and press a kiss to my palm. “I don’t know how you managed it before or how clueless people in those other towns were, but you’ve never been someone I could forget. Not for a moment.”
“Same here,” Torin rumbles while Aster gives me a shy smile.
The air feels stretched tight between us as I meet each of their gazes for a heated moment. Maybe it’s the content of the books we’re reading, or maybe it’s that we’re all together like this for the first time, but it suddenly feels like someone has stoked the fireplace in here and the temperature has risen a few degrees.
Then Finch appears in the doorway, his eyebrows raised and his tentacles fanning his face. “Not interrupting too much, am I?”
“You are, actually,” Torin grumbles.
“Ah, well, I need Kit’s help with something. Don’t worry, I’ll drop him back when we’re done.”
“I’ll come too,” Torin says, giving me a significant look. I nod at him, glad that he’ll be looking out for Kit while they’re gone.
Not that I don’t trust Finch to look out for his brother, but he does have a tendency to get a bit... distracted.
We spend another couple of hours scouring the pages of the books, working our way through until we have a better idea of what’s involved in a ritual to use sexual energy to boost our collective power. By this point, it’s dark outside and my eyes are starting to feel heavy while the headache at my temple has only grown more intense.
“It seems fairly straightforward, really,” I say with a jaw-cracking yawn. “Sex. Moonlight. Magic. The more sex and the better it is, the stronger the result.”
My cheeks are overheating again, and I gulp down some water to wet my parched throat.
“Well, it seems like my work here is done,” Jack says, jumping to his feet before groaning as he clutches his injured gut. “I don’t think I’ve ever read so many words in one go before, and I don’t know about you two, but I need a nap.”
“You go,” I tell him, piling the books back into the bag he brought them in. “You’ve helped loads already. I just don’t wantthe rest of the crew catching sight of these, or we’ll never hear the end of it.”
He gives a little wave before hobbling off.
“And then there were two,” I say to Aster with a grin. “I think we’re done here. Any more reading and my head’s going to explode.”
“I’m sorry,” Aster says. “I feel like this is my fault. If I’d been better. Smarter. I could have kept control over my magic and we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
I shake my head. “Noush would still be gone.”
“If I’d broken the gag on myself sooner, maybe we could have—”
“No.” I crawl closer to him before stopping on my knees beside him. “Don’t do that. No more self-flagellation.”
“I’ve had shit luck for a lot of years now,” he says. “But it felt like that streak had broken when I met you.”
“Aster—”
“And I know, I know we can’t go back to how things were before. But part of me is glad I broke the gag. That way I’m not such a burden on you, relying on you to speak for me.” He tries to clear his throat, swallowing hard. “Even if it meant losing you.”
My chest aches for him and for me. “You haven’t lost me,” I tell him. “And part of me is glad too, in an odd sort of way. This way we choose each other. We’re not forced together. That’s why this whole sex magic thing seems odd. Wrong. Like we’re forcing it.”
Aster cups my cheek, pressing a kiss to my jaw. He hesitates for a moment, pulling back to look me in the eye. My heart rate picks up as I suck in short breaths of air that’s full of Aster’s scent.
When I don’t pull away screaming, he slowly dampens his lips and kisses me.
Chapter 15
Reva
