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“Can’t…”
Air is his element. If he can’t give me what is shattering his control, then I’ll take it. I’ll make that connection. No idea how I know this could work, how I can make it work, but I put my mouth on his, and as his lips part, our breaths mingle.
His magic flows into me—or maybe it’s just the heat of his breath and I’m imagining things, but it’s as if I inhaled warm helium and my body becomes impossibly warm and light. With it comes a sense of sorrow, of a weight too heavy to bear, and it runs through my veins, slowing my heart, slowing the blood under my skin.
And then I can feel more. I feelthem. Fire and fury from Emrys, deep warm water from Ashton, bitter cool earth from Jason.
I gather it all. It flows into me. Spins in a circle. Flows back out. I’m kissing Sindri and they are all there, a part of me. He kisses me back until his magic snaps back into him and with a soft moan, he goes slack and slumps in my arms.
The tension in the room sinks to tolerable levels, even if I have my arms full of heavy, passed-out fae boy.
“Some help here?” I murmur, adjusting my hold on Sindri because the wings are in the way. They have slumped along with him, resting on the floor, separating the boys from each other. His magic may not be leaking, but he obviously still isn’t in control of it. The shift hasn’t reversed even if it stopped for now.
“Let me,” Jason says, coming around to take my place. “Give me some space.”
“Put him on my bed,” Ashton says.
“I knew he was struggling with the magic,” Emrys says. “But dammit I hadn’t realized how much.”
“Fuck, he’s heavy.” Jason slides his arms around the fae boy, grunting as he rises to his feet, pulling him up and dragging him toward the bed. “The damn wings are a bitch to negotiate.”
“Pass him to me,” Emrys says, climbing on the bed and reaching out for Sindri. “Careful.”
“Tear off his shirt,” Jason says. “Take it off him. They need to be skin-to-skin.”
Emrys shreds what’s left of Sindri’s shirt and distantly I worry he’ll be upset when he comes back to.
I suppress a hysterical laugh.
Together they lift him up and lay him on his side, folding his wings behind him, and I’m still on my knees, my brain trying to play catch up with everything going on.
“Mia.”
I glance up, find Ashton reaching a hand down to me. I take it and let him haul me to my feet. I don’t know what he’s thinking, if he’s just pushed his doubts aside for the moment in favor of helping Sindri, if he’s thinking that two of the boys obviously hate him for something his family did. How he feels about it.
He tugs on my hand, leading me to his bed, and I let him, let fate take me where it will. Right now, I feel like a piece of driftwood carried by the tides. My goal, my mission, the purposefulness I felt when I arrived at the Academy—my cousin’s enchanted sleep, my anger, my decisiveness to do anything to avenge her—it all feels distant right now.
All that feels real is Ashton’s rough palm, his long fingers wrapped around mine, the boys on the bed. The bond that seems to hold us together—magical but not only. Emotional. Physical. All-encompassing.
The magic, though. I felt them through Sindri, didn’t I? I felt their powers, their presence. I can’t be imagining that… So what if I’m not fully human? It had never crossed my mind before. My adoptive parents always assumed I’m human, always referred to me as human. But do they really know that much about me?
Above all, did they tell me the truth? They never told me that they were witches. What am I to believe? And why do I want so much to believe that I’m the abominable thing they warned me about, a magical creature, if it means I get to be with these cruel boys for real?
The actof climbing onto the bed to lie beside an unconscious boy is starting to feel familiar, as if my life has been set on repeat and I’m destined to relive this day, this moment over and over.
Can’t really complain, though, when I get to hold the prickly, beautiful fae in my arms again, trying to block out all my worries, all my misgivings about this.
Saving them is the best feeling, but when they’re well… What will they do about me? I may be wondering about who I really am, but one by one, they seem to come to the conclusion that I have been lying to them.
One by one they will push me away, and what will I do then? My heart will break, I know it.
I take off my blouse and my skirt and curl down beside him. He’s facing me, his beautiful face relaxed. He smells like the air after a rain, fresh and wild. I pull one of his slack arms over my waist so I can snuggle closer to him and I close my eyes, searching for that connection from before.
This time I feel it instantly. It’s as if with every contact, the bond becomes stronger, easier to access. It hums between us, and I realize the others are touching him because I feel them, too.
It’s such an astonishing sensation, unlike anything I’ve ever felt in my life, like discovering an extra sense. It’s like seeing with your heart, hearing with your skin, tasting with your mind.
I stroke his face, his smooth cheekbones, the subtle roughness on his jaw, brush silky hair from his eyes. He’s extraordinarily beautiful and I picture him in my mind, not opening my eyes, seeing him through touch, through memory—the blue and black of his hair, the starry dark of his eyes, the soft mouth that is so often set in a sneer, the square jaw, the strong line of his neck flaring to those wide shoulders.
