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“What?”

I gesture between him and the hollow. “Your name is the Tiller.”

He waits for me to explain.

“The fucking dirt, Kai.”

Understanding slowly crosses his face.

Then something happens that catches me completely off guard.

Malakai Wright smiles.

Not the faint twitch of his mouth I’ve gotten used to. Not the almost-smile that disappears before it can full form.

A real one.

It changes his entire face, softening something that has seemed carved from stone since the moment I met him.

And for one stupid second, I forgot what I was saying.

Then I remember. “Oh, fuck you.”

His smile widens. “That seems to be where this is going.”

My mouth falls open.

I stare at him. “Was that a joke?”

The smile disappears instantly. “No.”

“You made a joke.”

“I didn’t.”

“You absolutely fucking did.”

“I stated an observation.”

“That was a joke, Malakai Wright. You made a fucking jo…”

His mouth crashes into mine before I can finish.

The argument dies between us.

I fist both hands in the front of his shirt and pull him closer, kissing him with every ounce of tension that’s been building between us since the bonfire.

He lowers me carefully into the hollow.

Warm soil presses beneath me as the corn rises around us, closing us off from the rest of the farm. Moonlight slips between the stalks in broken ribbon, catching the sharp lines of his face as he braces one hand beside my head.

For a moment, he simply looks at me.

The smile is gone… so are the jokes.

I look up at him. At this impossible man. At the dirt beneath his fingernails. At the red ribbon around my wrist. At the field that has apparently been waiting centuries for someone with my name. This should terrify me. It does. But I know one thing with absolute certainty. This part is mine. Not the Harvest’s. Not the ritual’s.

MINE!