Page 129 of The Witch They Fear

"I'm sorry," he says.

Here it comes—the lapse, the mistake, the won't-happen-again, Miss Dellaby snapping back into place like a lock—

"Not for what I said." His eyes hold mine, steady again, and there's nothing hidden in them now. "I won't apologize for that. I'm sorry for the when. For doing it with you frightened and your magic loose and a year hanging over your head and how fucked up this is—" His throat closes. He leaves it. "You deserved to never know. Not this."

It would be so much easier if he'd lied.

"I–I should go."

"No." Immediate. Not an order—closer to a plea. "Not with your magic still settling. Stay. As long as you need." He nods at my hands, which are, I notice, still faintly bright. "I'll be up in my office if you need anything."

He takes the blanket off the back of the couch and lays it over the arm. Then he crosses to the stairs and stops at the bottom with his back to me, one hand on the rail.

"Your magic won't betray you here, Calypso. I built this room so it couldn't." A beat—the most careful thing he's ever handed me. "Whatever else is true tonight, that one is. You're safe down here."

He doesn't turn around.

"Goodnight, Calypso."

Then he's up the stairs and through the door, and it hums shut behind him, and I'm alone in the room that smells like cedar and old paper and him, with my magic lying quiet and whole. Behaving.

But my heart is pounding in my chest, roaring in my ears.

I sit. I pull the blanket over my knees. The ghost of his mouth is still on mine and I touch my lips, remembering his taste. His hands on the back of my neck.

The strength he was holding back so he didn’t crush me against him.

Thirty feet up, through all that stone, the one man alive who can switch me off like a light is sitting alone in his office with my power still printed on his hands.

But he’s right–I do feel safe here.

I’ve actually never felt safer.

And all I can think about is how badly I want him to come back down here and kiss me again.

Chapter 22

I wake up warm, and for one disoriented second I don't know where I am, which means for one disoriented second I'm thirteen and the white is coming for me—

Then I breathe in.

Cedar. Old paper. Woodsmoke and Aamon–pure Aamon.

It takes me a second to place the low ceiling and the wall of books and the give of old leather under my hip. The lair. Aamon's underground library, where I apparently fell asleep on the couch and never made it home. There's a blanket over me I didn't pull all the way up. The sconces are burning low and gold. My cheek is stuck to the leather, my mouth tastes like sleep, and last night unspools behind my eyes all at once—

The cemetery. Leopold's voice, whose would you start with. Kage in the dark and the char handprint on his shirt. The run across campus with the magic clawing up my throat. The wards closing over my skin as I went down the stairs. The flood pouring out of me and into Aamon, his hands folded over mine.

And then the wall coming down.

His mouth. His hands in my hair. Centuries of that immovable composure cracking open against me and it felt so fucking good.

I press my face into the leather and make a sound that is not dignified.

Okay. Sit up. Be a person.

I sit up. The blanket pools in my lap. My hair is a disaster, my dress from the Veillée has wrinkled itself into permanent topography, and somewhere in the night I lost a shoe. The room is quiet in that dense, warded way it always is—sealed, safe, mine for as long as I'm in it.

And my magic is calm.