When she finally needed to take a breath—because though she was an excellent witch, she was also human, as was he, and respiration was a necessity, not a nice-to-have—Embry only pulled back enough to inhale. But with the hit of oxygen also came another realization.
Embry looked Rye directly in the eye and finally found the right words for this situation.
“I think I’ve been in love with you for a long time, Rye Knighton.”
Rye brought his hands from her waist to her face, cupping it like the most delicate piece of crystal. Or perhaps like the breakable thing that was her heart.
“IknowI’ve been in love with you for a long time, Embry Woodcross.”
A twinge of their familiar banter surfaced. “I wasn’t aware this was a competition.”
“It’s not a competition. It’s a mere fact.”
Embry trailed a thumb along his jaw, then back into his sandy hair—which was even more perfectly mussed than before, if one could believe it. “Prove it, Knighton.”
Rye didn’t even hesitate. “Woodcross, do you know why I really took a gap year?”
“Not because you had a premonition that setting up cameras all over our property would save me from a literal witch hunt?”
He let out a surprised laugh. “Unfortunately, no.”
Rye’s eyes grew serious again and he played with the ends of her hair, immediately wiping out Balthazar’s last hexed touch.
“My real reason for taking a gap year was so that I could stay with you.”
Rye paused, and when Embry’s lips dropped open in surprise, he caressed her cheek with his thumb and nodded wholeheartedly.
“I wanted to be here for your senior year, and I wanted to go through undergrad and law school with you at the same time.” Embry was certain she wasn’t breathing. “It wasn’t so I could babysit you or spy for Lazarus—please don’t think either of those things—I just couldn’t imagine my life without you in it. So I did what I could to make sure I was there, even if it couldn’t bewithyou.”
Embry captured Rye’s mouth hard and fast, just as he had previously, but without any of the accompanying panic. She kissed him like an exclamation point.
“Rye, I want you to be with me,” she assured him, just in case her actions weren’t enough. “I will kiss you a thousand times over if that’s what it takes to get through that thick skull of yours.”
“I won’t turn you down,” he answered, “but just know that”—here, he drew in a hardy breath—“all my life, you’ve been this beautiful, kind, caring presence. I know I’m hard on you, I test you, I vex you, and you’ve suffered my moods better than anyone ever should. But I still think you’re the best person I know. You make me better.”
Rye’s voice cracked. When he continued, Embry was sure there was a sheen in his eyes.
“So when you said the other night that you didn’t know what you’d do with yourself if Oakley managed to have me? I felt thesame way about the prospect of Balthazar having you. That was why I was so awful about him”—he smirked—“though it turned out I was right not to like him.”
They laughed, because it was true that Rye was the only one besides Alistair to dislike the sorcerer before it was revealed he was a vampire-hunting psychopath. Rye’s judgment of character was incredibly astute, it seemed, even if his original judgment was based on an entirely different metric than Balthazar’s downfall.
Embry grazed a thumb over that poet’s mouth of Rye’s and smiled at him as if he were the moon and stars—it turned out he was.
Then, because, theater kids that they were, they both very much enjoyed a callback, Embry looked him straight in the eye and told him exactly what he wanted to hear.
“No one has me but you, Rye Knighton.”
CHAPTER 45
GOODBYE, OAKLEY RIDDLE
ONE WEEK AFTER SHE HAD BEEN CROWNED HOMECOMING ROYALTYby the student body of Raven’s Head School for the Magically Gifted, Oakley Riddle was officially eulogized by those same classmates on the school’s five-sided quad.
The vigil was a joint venture between Embry—who’d had the idea—and the Raven’s Head social committee leaders, aka Skye Wolverton and Fairfax Mirza.
But of course, the Head Bitch insisted on running the whole thing. Which, honestly, suited Embry just fine considering her amount of makeup work and general exhaustion.
Every student and teacher received a candle upon entry to the quad. Fairfax had enchanted each so that they’d burn but not drip hot wax onto the holder’s hand. They would also flicker until he extinguished them all at once with a special spell at the ceremony’s close.
