He blinks. I blink.
He leans forward.
His mouth touches mine, and the kiss is soft. Softer than I expected from someone ancient and formidable and made of shadows. He’s careful with it. Careful with me.
The world stops. Not metaphorically. Something actually shifts, some fundamental quality of the air in the room, like the universe has registered what is happening and taken a moment to acknowledge it. I feel it in my bones, in the marrow of me, in whatever it is that makes me a witch and him what he is. Ancient and vast and made of shadow, and somehow here, somehow kissing me like this is something that was always going to happen, and everything before it was simply the long way around.
His hand cups my face, and I feel centuries in it. Not weight, not age, but depth. The specific depth of something that has existed long enough to know exactly what it wants.
He’s choosing this. He’s choosing me. My throat goes tight with something enormous that I’m not ready to look at directly yet, so I just kiss him back instead, which seems like the right response. Which seems, actually, like the only response.
My whole body hums. My magic stirs, rising up to meet whatever he is, and they recognise each other, and I feel that recognition like a chord struck in the dark. Almost like two things that were always supposed to find each other, finally finding each other.
In another life, I think, this could have been everything.
I let myself have it anyway. Just this. Just once. The taste of something I’m not going to get to keep, which is fine,which I’m used to, which is just how things are for people like me.
I don’t let myself think about how much that costs.
Not yet.
Right now, I’m kissing Dis and nothing else matters.
Chapter 24
It’s Not What It Looks Like
Iwakeupwarm.Thisis the first thing I notice, before I’ve properly opened my eyes or remembered where I am or processed anything about the situation I’m in. Just warmth, the specific, dense, comfortable warmth of being close to another person, which is not a sensation I have a great deal of experience with and which my half-asleep brain is cataloguing with something close to reverence.
Then I remember everything.
My eyes open.
I am on the futon. In the circle. And I am, there is absolutely no other word for this, snuggling. My face is against something that isn’t a pillow. Something cool and solid and smelling faintly of shadows and something older than shadows. My arm is across something. Something that is, upon closer inspection, Dis.
I am snuggling Dis.
In my sleep. Without consent or planning or any of the decision-making processes I would like to have been consulted about. My body has simply gone ahead andsnuggled an ancient shadow king and presented me with this as a fait accompli.
I don’t move. I lie very still and conduct an extremely rapid internal assessment of my situation. The options are as follows. One, I could pretend I’m still asleep and delay dealing with this indefinitely. Two, I could move away casually and pretend it never happened. Three, I could address it directly, which would require having feelings about it out loud, and that option is immediately disqualified.
I decide to start with option two.
I shift, very slowly and casually, like a person who was simply repositioning in their sleep rather than performing a tactical withdrawal from a snuggling incident. I make it approximately three inches before a voice says, very quietly and with the particular quality of someone who has been awake for some time, probably because he doesn’t sleep, being a shadow being and all,
“Good morning, Little Witch.”
I close my eyes.
“Morning,” I say.
There’s a pause. Dis says nothing. I say nothing. The circle hums quietly around us, that familiar frequency that has become one of the sounds of home in a way I haven’t examined and am not going to examine right now. Outside the window, Bristol is doing its morning thing. A bus. Some pigeons.
I become aware, gradually, that there is a third presence in the room.
I sit up.
Fiend is outside the circle.
