The Worth heir shakes his head. “I drove, since I didn’t know how far I’d be going… Went across one of the bridges before I got a clear sense of direction and parked in a lot on the other side, same as them.” He tips his head to the Raith brothers and gestures vaguely back the way we came on the east side of the river.
“We’d better get going before the sun’s coming back up,” Cole mutters, giving Asher a nudge.
The words pop out before I’ve thought them through. “I’m sorry it happened like this. We’ll… We’ll figure everything out.”
The professor gives me a dark look, clearly unimpressed by my weak reassurance, and stalks off with Asher in tow. It feels as if he’s tearing off a shred of my heart as he goes.
Byron hesitates. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow, like usual.”
“Yeah.”
I don’t know what else to say. But as I watch Byron set off after the brothers, the tug in my chest solidifies into a yank.
I can make one thing between us a little better. I hope.
I slip out from under Salvatore’s arm with a quick peck to his hand to soften my sort-of rejection. “I need to talk to Byron about something. I’ll be right back.”
Salvatore laughs. “Go ahead and pet his ego a little. He is your match too.”
He couldn’t know what I actually need to say.
I hurry off the bridge and catch up with Byron several paces across the damp grass. He stops at my approach and glances over his shoulder with a puzzled crease in his brow.
I halt a few feet away. “Hey. I just wanted to be clear… I—I know I handled that thing at the club badly. I promise I was just as into what happened between us as you were. I got overwhelmed by how much I did like it, and that I’d let myself go that far, and… I shouldn’t have taken my confusion out on you.”
Byron blinks. Then a gleam of warmth lights in his eyes, both relieved and an echo of the hunger I saw in him the afternoon of our furtive hookup.
It’s enough to make my legs pang with the urge to throwmyself into his arms right now. But this isdefinitelynot the setting to be waking up his glim.
With typical Byronian restraint, a slight smile tugs at one corner of his mouth. “It’s good to hear that. I’m not sure I can completely blame you, when I’ve been pretty confused too.” He pauses. “I’ve never heard of there being signs of a bond before the match actually sparks before…”
My heart outright lurches. That’s not a line of thinking I want him heading down. “Maybe it only happens when it’s such a large union? Five is pretty unusual. Or it could have just been a coincidence. I guess we’ve had various kinds of tensions building between us for a while.”
Entirely of the rivalry sort until I showed up in Other Elodie’s place, as far as I can tell, but Byron appears to accept my explanation. “It’s strange how these things work. But you’re right. We’ll sort it out. Fate must know what it’s doing.”
He sets off again, his stride looser than before, but my gut stays knotted.
I have about as much faith in fate’s competence as I do in the mystical properties of holy water. We’re facing this problem on our own.
Have I learned enough across the two worlds I’ve lived in to steer us well this time?
Three
Asher
The security lamps cast a hazy glow over the small public parking lot where Cole’s dark gray Toyota is parked. Between the lighting, the blurring of my thoughts from lack of sleep, and the thrum of unfulfilled energy that keeps resonating between my palm and my heart, I feel like I’m walking through a dream.
I’ve found my match. Of all the people in the world, it’s Elodie Devine.
No matter how many times I remember that fact, it comes with the same muddled mix of elation and trepidation.
There’s been something about Elodie recently… Something that made me want to get to know her better, to understand her, to help her. But I’d never have dared to even hope that fate would throw a nobody like me together with one of the most prominent lucents in the entire academy.
Four of the most prominent lucents, really, if I count the other matches I’m bound to in our larger union.
And it’s not as if she’s seemed to feel equally interested in me. The opposite, actually. She’s outright told me to stay away from her.
Even tonight, when we found her and grappled with how to handle the attack… she barely acknowledged me when I spoke directly to her. Whenever I moved closer, she tensed up.
