“Praise the Goddess that didn’t happen.”
“Praise yours truly, who worked very hard for two weeks to convince your father I would be the worst person ever to mentor you.”
“You lie. Daddy would never torture me like that.”
Rye fished his phone from his pocket. “Would you like to see our email exchange?”
“Put that away. I don’t want to know his reasoning.” Actually, she did. Was Daddy losing his marbles along with control of hisblood sugar? Because he knew exactly how his daughter interacted with the boy next door. “I’m fine with how it all worked out. Grumpiness aside.”
Rye sighed and sat up just enough that he could lean toward her ear. When he was so close she could smell the rosemary oil in his hair, Rye chin-checked where Merle stood, head tipped back so far, his hat was barely clinging to the crown of his overgrown mop as he downed a mug of mead. “His grumpiness is not about you.”
She scoffed. “It sure is directed atme. I’d like to know why, if you’d just tell me.”
Merle’s attitude was most certainly something Embry needed to understand. And fast. It wasn’t as if he could keep her from Ascension—she was a Woodcross after all—but going against the grain was not Embry’s preferred mode of transport.
Rye looked to her, the clear green of his eyes like sea glass washed ashore, bottle shattered. “You’d be grumpy, too, if you were alone.”
“Iamalone,” she snapped flippantly. “I have a single room and no boyfriend. Alone.”
Rye heaved a sigh. “You live in a wing with forty people. You go home to your father whenever you want. You are not alone in anything but the temporary sense of the word.” Rye nodded discreetly to Merle. “If you thought about more than just yourself for literally five seconds, you’d remember that he lost his wife last year—young. Twenty-seven. Unless he’s at a coven meeting, dealing with customers, or mentoring you, he’s alone.”
Oh. Goddess.
As soon as he’d said it, Embry realized she’d gone to the funeral for Merle’s wife, Agatha Pulaski. She’d taken part in the coven death ritual. She’d even cleaned off the woman’s grave on the spring equinox as part of her coven community service hours. YetEmbry hadn’t thought about how this affected Merle, who was barely thirty himself.
She’d lost her mother, but she’d been a baby. Embry didn’t know that hole in her heart well, and she didn’t examine it much, preferring to focus on what she did have—which was, admittedly, a lot. But she’d never really thought about how her loss might not be equal to Merle’s, even if their loved ones were both buried in Raven’s End. Rye’s, too.
And then it hit Embry like the first blast of winter. Who was Embry Woodcross to tell Rye Knighton that she was alone? Even as a bratty joke? He’d been orphaned young, raised by an aunt who couldn’t wait for him to board at Raven’s Head and then absconded for the Amalfi Coast the moment he turned eighteen last year. Now he was alone in that big house with nothing more than his father’s name and ghosts of parents’ past haunting the halls.
In that moment, shame crawled its spidery fingers up the back of her neck.
Rye was talking again, low and sharp. “Have you ever heard the phraseYou never know what other people are going through?”
That burned. Shedidthink about other people. She’d been thinking about other people for days. Oakley, Jonesy, the kids she helped at orientation, even—and always—Daddy. Yet he was right. Still, the surge of shame she’d suffer at blatantly admitting it seemed worse than what she’d suffer deflecting it. So, inspecting her hands, she said, “I’m not an omniscient, Rye.”
He wasn’t going to let her go that easily. He never would.
“You don’t have to be omniscient to have some compassion, Woodcross. Just maybe realize that it’s not always all about you and give the guy a break, okay.”
“I don’t always think everything is all about me.” He loomed close, a haughty eyebrow arch articulating everything he thoughtabout that. Embry swept him away with her elbow like the pest that he was. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh, no, I think I understand you better than anyone, Embry Woodcross.”
He was right—and she hated it. She scrunched up her nose in frustration, eyes squeezed shut as she fisted both hands into her lap. Why was she this way with him? Rye Knighton was an eternal paper cut, always exposing the rawness under her expertly exfoliated skin.
“You’re soinfuriating.”
This insult, of course, made a smile spread across his face.
“Infuriating? Because I call you out when others don’t?”
“Well,yes.”
Rye laughed at the cutting edge in her voice. “If I’m infuriating, you’re insufferable.”
“No one is making you suffer me, Knighton. Go ahead. Leave. See ya.”
He didn’t budge. “But then everything would be so very boring.”
