“Who is it, Elodie?” Mom calls from the kitchen.
“It’s—It’s Byron.” She’s met my matches—well, the two of them who are willing to acknowledge the bond—but I wasn’t expecting him to drop in on us. I peer at him, taking in the bulging backpack slung over his shoulders and the small duffel at his side. “What happened?”
His Adam’s apple bobs. “My parents said it was the family or you. I can’t have both. So I picked you. I don’t know— I don’t think I’m going to be welcome there for a long time. I’m going to get a hotel room until we can figure everything out, but I wanted to see you first.”
I can’t tell if my heart has started beating again. He wanted to see me, the girl he just gave up everything for.
Disbelief colors my voice. “They kicked you out?”
“According to them, if I’m joining this union, I’m not a Worth anymore.” A little more of a smile shows, but it’s pained. “It’s all right. It was my choice. I know I made the right one.”
“You didn’t have to?—”
“Idid,” he says, so firmly the words jumpstart my pulse, and then he’s dropping the duffel and pulling me to him, and I can’t help melting into his embrace. Into the knowledge that this is where I’ve always been meant to be…
I blink, and this world’s Byron is still gazing at me. Waiting for me to reply.
My lips part.
Is this really fair to him? Was it ever?
An impression of the other Byron’s voice winds through my head.“It isn’t about fairness. It’s about fate. And you’re mine.”
I swallow thickly.
I’ve never been the one who asked him to choose. I’m only being honest.
The words come out in barely a whisper, but they come. “I’ll always want you.”
There’s no mistaking the joy that brightens Byron’s expression—or the punch of guilt that rams through my gut.
What am I doing? Just hours ago, I was thinking that I might be dragging my matches into the path of a sadistic monster. He’d be safer on the other side of the ocean.
I don’t know if it’s the bond resonating between us or if I’m actually being logical, but a resolve surges up inside me with so much certainty I can’t deny it.
I need to give him a real choice. If we activate his glim, he won’treallyneed anything else from me. He can decide where he goes with all his magic rather than the uncertainty hanging over him.
And if Mystery Woman or any other menaces try to make him pay for whatever they think I’ve done, he’ll be more than ready to defend himself.
I even know the right place, if this Byron has that much in common with the one who was once mine.
I brush my fingertips over his wrist, returning the caresshe offered earlier. “I think it’d be good for us to have a real conversation once we’re done with classes for the day. Just the two of us. I’d love to leave the whole city behind, to not have to worry at all about any other people nearby. Do you know anywhere not too far where we could be alone?”
Byron’s smile reaches his eyes. “Actually, I do.”
Twenty
Elodie
Amessage from Salvatore pops up on my phone just as the ride Byron arranged for us turns onto a gravel road.
Where’d you sneak off to, a chroí?
A smile tugs at my lips, buoyed farther by the familiar patter of tiny stones hitting the car’s undercarriage. Byron glances over from the other side of the back seat, his brow knitting.
“It’s fine,” I tell him. “Just Salvatore worrying about me.”
I tap a quick message back.Going on a little outing with someone who’s also Worth my time.
