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Silence settled over the room. Jin broke it. “Your birthday is in July, isn’tit?”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I’ve got about two months left. It’s my own—my own fault. I took so long deciding. None of the witching men I met were quite who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. In the end I just picked the guy who seemed like the best of myoptions.”
“And he turned around and made some deal with your stepmother,” Seth filled in, his voicedark.
“I have full proof of that now.” My fingers brushed over my pocket with the folded contract. I’d slept with it in my pillowcase under my head last night. “When my father is back tomorrow, I’ll go to him. My stepmother—I don’t even know what she’d do to me if she realized I knew, to stop me from telling—but if I can bring it to him, and as her consort, he’s the one person shecan’tuse her magic to harm. The question is what happensthen.”
“You’re obviously not marrying that asshole,” Damonmuttered.
“No,” Iagreed.
“So then you need someone else as your consort,” Kyler said. “Back to the same problem you had before. And only two months left to find someone who’ll commit to you like that…” He frowned, looking at his hands as if he might find a way to grab hold of the problem and piece it together withthem.
Looking as if he wasn’t totally sure he’d wantto.
“That’s why I asked to meet all of you today,” Isaid.
The ripple of tension that had been running through the room between the guys abruptly stilled. I could feel, almost like a hum in the air, their attention focusing on me with a shift towardanticipation.
“What do you mean, Rose?” Sethsaid.
My hands twisted in front of me. “Well, obviously I’ve found out it isn’t true that only a witching man can affect my spark at all. I don’t know for sure if a full consorting will work with someone who’s not of that blood, but from what I’ve felt, from what I’ve been able to find out, I think trying would be worth therisk.”
Damon laughed sharply. “You’re asking if one of us would take thatspot.”
I ducked my head. “No, actually. I was thinking… I’ve seen evidence that maybe this wasn’t even uncommon sometime in our past…” Why was this part harder to come out with than all the taboo information I’d already shared? I squared my shoulders and lifted my chinagain.
“The group of us, we’ve always felt like a family to me,” I said. “Like a complete unit, meant to be together, to play off each other’s strengths. I know that’s kind of fallen apart since I’ve been gone, but we’ve come together again, haven’t we?” All of us except Gabriel. But we’d found a new equilibrium of sorts even withouthim.
“I want us to stay together,” I went on. “There’s no one in the world who means as much to me as you all do. I couldn’t pick one of you. I guess it’s selfish of me, but if I can have you, I want all ofyou.”
“Rose,” Kyler said, his eyes wide. “You mean— How would that work? In the long run, Imean.”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “There’s a lot I haven’t figured out yet. I don’t even know how hard it’s going to be to work around my father’s approval and the pressures from the rest of the witching community—but I don’t need their blessing. I’m my own witch. There’s nolawagainst this. And I think Idoneedyou.”
I stumbled onward before any of them could speak. “I’m not asking for an answer right now. I know you have your own lives, and committing to me in some kind of permanent relationship could upend everything. I just wanted to talk to you, now that I know that’s whatIwant, so you have as much time as possible to think about what you want. And to let you know how much you mean to me. The logistics, I can work on once I don’t have my stepmother to worryabout.”
As the last words spilled out, I felt suddenly drained. What more was there to say? I’d put my heart out there. It was up to them what they did withit.
Kyler pushed himself off the sofa. He walked straight to me and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me to him. As I leaned into his thin but solid body, Jin joined our embrace, and then Seth, and then Damon, until I was surrounded on all sides by their overlappingwarmth.
“I do need to think about it,” Kyler said. “It’s a lot to take in. But you have no idea how much I want to just say yes right now even if that means diving in blind. It’s the most incredible fucking honor of my life that you asked at all, Rose. You have to knowthat.”
“Same here,” Seth saidroughly.
“No argument,” Jin putin.
“You know how I feel about you, angel,” Damon said, his voicelow.
I exhaled in a shudder that was almost a sob, but more one of relief than anything else. “Okay. I want you to be sure, whatever you decide. We have two months. There’ll be a lot of details to work out. I just needed to startsomewhere.”
* * *
The guys left one by one. I watched from Jin’s front window, keeping to the side of the curtain, to see if anyone seemed to be paying attention to the comings and goings from the gallery. A few people passed by in the early afternoon sun, but no one lingered. My guys vanished in their varyingdirections.
Jin, who obviously wasn’t going anywhere, came up behind me. As I turned toward him, he rested one hand on my waist and used the other to tug the curtain closed. He nudged me against the wall, ducking his head close to mine. Under the tangy smell of paint that always seemed to cling to him, I caught a prickle of something warm and savory, like woodsmoke.
“You know,” he said with a smile, “it just occurred to me that you asked me to marry you, or as close to as you can get, and I haven’t even had the chance to kiss youyet.”
