Reagan drew back, arms loose at his sides. “Jane…your father… I cannot do anything about that.”
I blinked, taken aback by the way he read my question, when asking it had already taken more courage than it should have, especially after days without seeing him. “I know,” I said, eyeing the faint crease between his brows. “But it’s not… I don’t have to lose you too. Not anymore.”
His chest expanded with a silent inhale. “You were right before. Becoming Lady puts a target on your back. You can access mana now, which means you can stay. But it might take years to reach the strength you want.”
To wield as he did. It might not even happen, but that I knew. What instigated a litany of questions was hearing him sound so unsure.
I wondered if he had changed his mind. If that was the reason he’d kept his distance.
“All true,” I murmured, more certain than I expected, “but I’ll be a target either way. Until now, I wasn’t convinced I was mageborn. I just felt like a tired fraud playing with low magic. Like a harried witch.”
A human playing with runes and relics. Not really a hybrid born, not to them.
“But this is proof. True proof,” I went on. “And now, I have every reason to confront the people who would place a target on my back.”
It was a fair assumption that my mother had died because of them. Hiding hadn’t worked for her.
And yes, I was afraid. But I was angry too. So angry at the lies that had kept us from understanding ourselves. My terrible nights of sleep, Joy’s episodes of struggling to control her flux. They all had a reason, and they could have been prevented.
The power lit in my veins was smouldering now, and I welcomed the burn if it meant I could stay.
Reagan looked torn, shaking his head. “I will never forgive myself if something happens to you again.”
Conflict creased the lines of his face, yet some warmth had entered his eyes in the span of this conversation. We had so little time to decide, being forced by the terms imposed outside of these walls in matters that would change our lives. If he’d made his mind about this, I would respect it, but not before giving him all the information.
Still breathing hard, I reached for the lapels of his velvet jacket, letting my fingers rest there, feeling his rapid heartbeat. “I don’t expect it will be easy nor am I expecting you’ll still take me now. You have stronger prospects than me. But, if you still want me, then I need you to know that I want you. I want to be the person who gets to love you and help carry your burdens.”
A tremor coursed through him. In a breath’s moment, his hands cupped my face, eyes intent on every inch of it. Phantom hands brushed my shoulders, my pulse, pulled me closer as he towered over me.
“If we do this, there is no going back,” Reagan said, low, steady. “So you need to be ready for a burdened life with a cynical prick with a beast familiar.”
I pursed my lips, a smile tugging at them, while my heart raced at those wretched words. “How about you make that proposal a little bit more appealing?”
Reluctant amusement gleamed in his eyes as he blinked, half of his face the colour of a dusk sky from the fire. “But—” Reagan exhaled. “There will be no one else but you. There will be nothing that can keep me from you. There’s no place in this world where I wouldn’t find you. And I won’t let you go again.”
I didn’t want him to. In fact, I wanted to be closer, my grip unyielding on his jacket, holding him to me. My chest rose, yet I couldn’t form a single coherent thought.
“Do you still want me?” he asked.
I understood the stakes and felt almost a vain thrill at what it would mean to rise to the level required of me. To succeed, to defy every expectation and prove every doubt wrong. And to do this meant I could have him.
“Yes. I want you. I’m choosing you,” I said. “Are you sure about me?”
His ice-blue eyes were on my mouth while his thumb swept over the lower lip. It was the lazy smile that eased the pounding in my chest.
“I chose you a long time ago.”
And then his mouth was on mine, hard and fast, reminding me of everything we’d been missing.
He tugged me flush against his chest and lifted me, my arms slung around his shoulders as he carried me not to the door, butto the plush blue couch. Reagan laid me down, and I was pulling my sweater over my head, discarding it onto the floor. Needing to feel as close to him as I possibly could.
I joined him in working at the buttons of his shirt, our hands eager and rapid, his fingers fumbling with one as my shoulders shook against the couch.
He caught my look. “Enjoying that?”
“Immensely,” I said. “Watching you lose a battle with buttons is very funny.”
He shed the shirt, and all humour gave way to heat as I gazed at his chiselled chest, at the wide, muscular shoulders looming above me, the corded arms bracketing my head. The power thrumming around us was as clear as my own pulse, cool and dense, like being enveloped in cedar-scented morning dew.
