Pain slashed my chest. “Ezra isn’t going to …”
He isn’t going to die tonight.
But he might. And we all knew it.
“Get in there, Tori,” Kai ordered kindly. “I’ll text you when we’re on our way back.”
I nodded weakly, and they continued across the yard and through the gate. Vehicle doors opened and closed, then the engine started. As the SUV reversed out of the driveway, headlights flickering through the fence, I walked back inside.
Ezra was still leaning in the kitchen doorway, shadows draped across his face.
I trembled where I stood, terror and grief and hope and denial and simmering panic battling inside me—the emotions I’d been holding back all evening. I’d tried so hard to deny them, to keep this day positive, but now I couldn’t dam the flood.
Ezra opened his arms in invitation.
I sprinted the length of the kitchen. He caught me, sweeping me against his chest, crushing me to him. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, squeezing with all my strength.
A hundred embraces flashed through my mind, just like this one yet not like it at all. A hundred hugs filled with warmth, calm, safety, friendship, laughter, tears, and love.
The memory of our first hug, that awkward question I’d posed in Justin’s apartment hallway, ballooned inside me. A week after my first shift at the Crow and Hammer, the night Aaron had been attacked while walking me home. Last May. Nine months ago.
Exactly nine months, I realized suddenly. Aaron had been attacked on May 19—a date I’d never forget—and today was February 19.
Was nine months all I’d get with Ezra? Three-quarters of a year? A summer, a fall, a cold winter of stress and worry … but no spring to thaw the ice and call back the sun?
A sob shook me, though I quickly stifled it.
Ezra’s arms tightened, then relaxed. I tilted my head back, fighting the tears. Our eyes met, and there was sadness in his stare—but there was strength and steel too.
Taking my hand, he led me into the living room and guided me to the sofa before walking away. His footsteps padded up the stairs. The clack of a door opening, then closing. Returning footfalls.
He reappeared, carrying his acoustic guitar, and sat beside me. Settling the guitar on his lap, he plucked each string and adjusted the tuning pegs, then set his left hand against the frets.
With a sweep of his fingers, sound cascaded from the guitar. An unfamiliar melody emerged, the twanging notes soft and mournful. They danced a slow spiral, falling and falling, somehow growing even sadder until tears were streaking my face. The music slowed until he was plucking single notes, soft, fading, dying. I hugged myself, scarcely holding it together.
His left hand shifted across the frets, and his thumb brushed a new note. His fingers moved again, and the anguished melody began to rise instead of fall. It built, and somehow it was the sound of hope. It was the sound of a calling future, of a brighter day. The sound of renewal and rebirth.
The song swelled into a bright crescendo that rang with expectation before fading into silence.
He waited a long moment, then plucked out a simple scale. “I learned that song when I was a kid—I was twelve, I think. Whenever it all seemed like too much and I wanted to give up, I would play it over and over.”
I twisted my hands together so hard it hurt.
“My whole life, I’ve been pushed by other people.” He strummed a chord, then another. “Every big change I’ve experienced was because of someone else. My parents, the Court, Lexie, Eterran, then Aaron and Kai. And finally … you.”
“I …” My voice warbled. “I didn’t mean to—”
“It wasn’t a bad kind of push, Tori,” he murmured. “You helped me realize how passive I’d become … how I’d stopped deciding anything. I’d stopped wanting anything, and I was just waiting for the end. I told myself I was just living in the moment, but I wasn’t really living anymore.”
He ran his hand along the neck of his guitar. “I really enjoy live music … concerts and music festivals. Being a demon mage doesn’t stop me from attending concerts. There’s no reason I couldn’t, but I never even told Aaron and Kai it was something I’d like to do. I just … forgot it was okay to want things.”
His eyes, soft and warm, rose to mine. “Then I met you.”
My throat closed and I couldn’t quite breathe.
“I don’t want to die, but maybe I will. But I can do this because I decided. I’m not slipping into madness or waiting for Darius to put me down like a sick dog. This is my choice. This is what I want—a chance at a real life. I’m afraid, but it’s a different fear than when it was all out of my control.”
“Ezra,” I choked.
Quiet sadness touched his smile. “I can’t say I have no regrets, but no matter what happens, I’ll never regret a single moment with you.”
I pushed his guitar off his lap, grabbed his face in both hands, and kissed him. I kissed him so hard I was bruising my lips, and I didn’t care. The pain joined the burning agony in my chest.
“You’re going to survive,” I gasped against his mouth. “You’re going to be fine.”
“Better than fine.” He sank his hands into my hair. “I’m going to be myself for the first time in ten years.”
I climbed onto his lap, our mouths locked together. Desperate. Urgent. His arms banded around me, one hand gripping my hair. I kissed him harder, deeper.
How could I lose him now? How could I lose this wonderful, terrible, agonizing, beautiful thing between us when it’d barely begun?
My fingers raked over his shoulders, then I reached down and grabbed the bottom of his shirt. I needed more. I needed everything. I needed all of him now, before it was too—
“Tori,” he whispered.
I clutched his shirt, limbs quivering faintly.
“I want this to be just
