Back in a Spell (The Witches of Thistle Grove, #3)(78)

He cocked his head, eyebrows raised. “Well? It’s your show, Nina. Tell me what’s up.”

“Emmy came to see me yesterday,” I began, twisting my hands nervously in my lap. “She knew—she’d found out that Gareth and I were there, that one of us had glamoured Delilah. She, ha, thought it was Gareth. So she was starting her inquiry with me, instead. The reasonable Blackmoore.”

Morty’s jaw tightened at the mention of Gareth’s name, but he didn’t respond, watching me silently. So he’d meant it literally; this was my solo show. He wasn’t going to make it any easier for me by participating in this conversation.

“I came clean with her,” I continued, lacing my fingers so tightly the knobs of my knuckles pressed painfully against each other. “Told her everything. About the goddess, my deity’s favor, the stone. What my family had wanted me to do with it.”

At that, I thought I could detect a glimmer of shock in those azure eyes, as if implicating my family was a different tack than he’d been expecting. But he kept his face schooled into near-perfect neutrality, not so much as a twitch at the corner of his mouth.

“She thought maybe I wanted to duel with her,” I said, with a rueful little laugh. “The Great British Sorcery-Off, she called it, which, actually funny. But I said—I said no. I told her I didn’t want to be Thistle Grove’s supervillain-in-residence, or her enemy, to take what belongs to her and to all the other witches in this town. And that I was sorry for what I’d done to Delilah, and willing to do whatever it took to make things right with her.”

“So you’re going to give back the stone?” he said, and I could feel a hot, bright pulse of something even through the shielded bond. “And what, your family’s just gonna let you do that?”

“I won’t be asking them for permission,” I replied, swallowing down a piercing pang of pain at the thought of letting the stone go, losing that dazzling conflagration, that celestial fire gone from me forever. “I’ll have to talk to Gareth about it, of course, since he’s keeping it for me—but he’ll do the right thing, too. I know it.”

“But will that be enough? Just returning the stone? You were distorting power channels before you even had it.”

“I’m going to return the deity’s favor to Belisama, too,” I said, unable to keep my eyes from surging hot with tears at the thought of the loss. “I think . . . I’m pretty sure I know how to do that, now. What she wants to hear from me before she’ll accept the return. That’s why I came here tonight, actually—I’ll be going to the lake tomorrow night to do it, with Emmy. And I was hoping . . . I was really hoping you’d want to be there, too.”

He took a long, shuddering inhale, closing his eyes tight. When he opened them, they shimmered bright with tears, the cooler counterpart to mine.

“Of course I’ll come with you,” he said, sliding across the couch to pull me against him. The wave of relief that broke over me was so sweet and tremendous that I laughed a little, so absolutely thrilled to be touching him. “Oh, thank fucking baby Jesus you made the right call. You have no idea how scared I was that you’d go dark side, and I’d have to let you leave without ever kissing you again.”

“So . . . you do want to kiss me, then, is what I’m hearing,” I said, just a little coy, my heart racing even harder.

“I want to kiss you, and I am so goddamn proud of you, and I also want to do much more than kiss you,” he said, bringing his lips close to mine without quite touching. “How’s that plan sound?”

“Fabulous,” I assured him, brushing the tip of my nose against his. “Flawless, in fact.”

“Dope. I also really want you to drop that shielding right now, please.” His arms tightened around my waist. “Because I want to feel you again.”

He did not have to ask me twice.

The shield dissolved with a single concentrated thought from me, and as his emotions collided with mine, I gasped aloud at the force of them—he was proud of me, bursting with pride and awe commingled with delight, along with a profound respect and understanding for how difficult the decision must have been for me. And I could feel just how impressed he was that I’d managed to choose against my lifelong conditioning, how strong and brave and bold he thought that made me.

A forever-demigoddess in the soul, even when I was no longer one in the flesh.

It stripped away any of my lingering doubts about whether I’d done the right thing. Washed me clean of them entirely, like a cool, welcome tide.

“I don’t think I’m as amazing as you think I am,” I whispered into the space between our lips. “But thank you anyway, for thinking it.”

“You’re right,” he whispered back. “What you are is even better than that.”

And he meant it, I could feel how much. Because with him, I didn’t have to be perfect, or anywhere even near it. I just had to be good, and that was more than enough.

His mouth melted against mine, and in an instant his tank was tugged over his head, my sweater pulled off and tossed on the floor as I climbed onto his lap. The feel of his skin against mine as his emotions surged inside me was delicious, intoxicating, an elevation of arousal that made me feel something close to high. I pulled back to look at him, the utter, improbable beauty of that delicately etched face and dazzling eyes, the luminous way he watched me as I wove my fingers through his damp hair. I might be readying to give up all the borrowed light and fire I’d been given, but he himself was light.