“You don’t need a courage elixir,” he murmurs. “You’re already brave.”
He hands me the vial, placing it softly in my palm. I shiver when his fingers brush mine.
“You don’t need a strength elixir. You’re already strong.”
“Then what’s it for?” I ask, forcing my voice to stay steady.
“There’s an old belief that if you take a small sample of every plant in an immersion house and speak your wildest dreams out loud as you apply it, it will make them come true.”
I look around the room, at the hundreds of plants surrounding us.
“There’s a sample from every plant in this elixir?”
“Yeah, I’ve been working on it for a while.” His voice is quiet, shy. His confidence from earlier is gone, and his cheeks betray him with a dark shade of red.
I roll the vial around in my hand. It is the best gift I’ve ever been given.
“I don’t know what to say. I love it. Thank you.”
“I can’t imagine what this year has been like for you. The rest of us get to try and fail on our own, but you’re expected to do everything in front of others. And who knows how things will change once the school learns about your new power.”
I swallow hard.
Sang leans against a table but never takes his eyes off mine. “I guess I just wanted you to know you’re not alone. I wanted to put myself out there the way you’re forced to do on a daily basis.”
I don’t say anything. It hurts to swallow, and my throat aches with all the words I’m holding in. I’m overwhelmed, afraid I might cry if I speak.
Sang seems to take my silence as displeasure, because he quickly adds, “I know it’s nowhere near the same thing. I just thought—”
“Thank you,” I say, cutting him off.
Slowly, I walk over to Sang and wrap my arms around his neck.
“Thank you,” I say again, my voice nothing but a whisper. My breath hits his neck, and goose bumps rise on his skin.
Sang wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me closer, so close our bodies are perfectly aligned, touching at every point. He smells like black tea and honey, and I rest my head on his shoulder and close my eyes.
“I like you, Clara Densmore.” His tone is defeated, as if he has done something wrong, as if he’s scared I’ll be disappointed in him. “I like you so much.”
Tears sting my eyes. I force them back and fight against the words rising in my throat. We hug each other for a long time, his admission hanging in the air like the fog at dawn.
And in this moment, I’m too tired to fight. I’m too tired to swim against the current.
I lean back and look into his perfect eyes. The air between us is charged, and before I can talk myself out of it, before I can marvel at a desire I’ve only ever felt in summer, I let myself be swept away.
I kiss him.
At first he’s stunned, still. Then his arms tighten around me, and we’re fall-fall-falling over the edge of the waterfall, his hands in my hair and his lips against mine.
He kisses me as if it might never happen again, slow and deep and deliberate. There’s a gentleness to the way he opens his mouth and twists his tongue with mine, the way he traces his fingertips down the sides of my face and onto my neck as if he’s memorizing me. He touches me the way he does his flowers, with confidence and awe and adoration. It showers me in warmth, and I push into him, trying to get closer still.
We stumble back into the table behind him, pots shaking from the movement, but our lips never part. I’m breathless with a desire I didn’t know I had. Kissing him feels like hunger and standing in the rain and falling from the peak of a roller coaster all at once. I’m desperate for him and push further into him, never close enough. A pot falls from the table and shatters on the floor, but we do not pause.
If I were capable of melting, I think I’d melt right here on the floor of this immersion house, because there’s not a single worry propping me up.
The worries will come later. I know they will.
But right now, with Sang’s mouth on mine and his arms wrapped tightly around me, I revel in the fall.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“I love the way rain is accepted in all its forms. Sometimes it pours. Sometimes it sprinkles. And sometimes it hangs back and watches the world before it falls.”
—A Season for Everything
I couldn’t sleep last night, kept awake by the ghost of Sang’s lips on mine, by the way his hand felt pressed against my lower back. By the worries that got louder and louder as the seconds ticked by. I’m so angry at myself for letting this happen, and yet I can’t bring myself to wish it hadn’t.
Sang is at risk. He was before we kissed, and he is now. The only difference is that I can’t deny it anymore.
There’s this tiny hope in the back of my mind that maybe I’m in control now. We’ve been training together for so long. My magic knows him. If it were going to seek him out, it would have done so already. We pummeled each other in the snow, for Sun’s sake. If it were going to hurt him, that would have been the perfect chance.
But it didn’t hurt him.
Instead, it showed us a new kind of magic.
And maybe that’s what Sang is: a new kind of magic.
I feed Nox and rush to meet Sang outside the administration building. He’s already waiting for me, and I can’t help the way my eyes drift to his lips, the way the back of my hand brushes against his. I look away to stop myself from closing the space between us.
Spring has brightened everything,
