It was a nice recovery.

“Your courtship method of arrogance, self-loathing, and then telling me how beautiful other girls are is pretty unique,” said Kami. “I like it. I don’t know what that says about me.”

“You like it?” Jared asked, with a shy glance up at her.

“I’m glad you told me the truth.”

“That’s all I intended to do,” Jared said hastily. “I don’t expect anything from you. That was what I’ve been trying to tell you. I want you, but I don’t need you to give me anything you don’t want to give. You existing in the world is all I need.”

“I’m glad you told me the truth,” Kami repeated. “Because I have something to tell you now.”

Kami straightened up from the wall and looked into his eyes, those pale clear eyes, like mirrors, like pools.

She had not only worried that he did not love her the way she wanted to. She had not only loved and longed. She had spent so much time worrying that accepting love, becoming part of all the love stories, would trap her in some way, change her into someone weak, someone she did not want to be. But she realized now that she had been narrow-minded, considering a love story as a lesser story, a story that might make her lesser to be part of. She had always thought she needed to be in control, but now she found she did not want to put any limits on herself at all. She wanted to be the person she was, and not the person anyone, including herself, had ever thought she should be. She had thought a lot lately about making all the love stories her own, of telling them her own way.

He had told her everything she had been hoping to hear. She hadn’t been sure how Jared felt, though she had hoped, because Ash had loved her when he was bound to Jared and not before or after. But what was between them was complicated and often painful and priceless, terrifying to risk. She had not known what to call it, for so long.

She had not been sure, but she had hoped, and planned. She had planned this. She had asked Ash to help her spend the last of their linked magic to build a barrier, the highest, strongest barrier she had ever built. To hide the link that Kami had not broken.

She brought the last barrier between them crashing down. She felt the link between them flicker and wake to life, like waking the woods except that it was just them, being marvels to each other.

The sky turned upside down for a moment, so they were falling into vivid blue. The gold of Cotswold stone blazed and embraced them, and Kami turned as Jared turned, moved with his movements. She felt his joy running through her like a river through parched lands, bringing everything to life. She felt her waist beneath her hands as he did, at the same time as she savored the sensation of his hands resting above her hips, moving to slide up her back. He bent down and kissed her and she knew his hunger and his longing, and knew he could feel hers. She knew which was her, and which was him, and being linked meant they could share, meant they had forged a blazing path and could meet in the middle, close, close as other people did not wish or dare to be, as close as they could get.

“So you do …” Still, after all this, Jared hesitated, hardly daring to believe. “Do you love me?”

Kami tipped back her head and laughed at him, felt her laugh running along his bones, delight mirrored back to her and back again. The sun hung above them like a silent shining bell in the sky. She opened up her thoughts and let him see it all, the story of her love laid out before him as though written in scarlet and gold.

She said: Read my mind.