He’d been practising. Not only had he protected the sprites from the effects of his magic, but he’d dispersed the euphoric effect it had once had on him, too. Just as she’d been teaching him.
Zylah threw her arms around his neck and pressed a kiss against his scar before pulling back to look at him. “Now it’s perfect.”
Holt summoned two more glasses of wine. “Before Kej drinks us dry.” He raised his glass to Zylah’s, his smile bright, so much love and hope in his eyes it had her swallowing the lump in her throat. “To finding each other,” he said, his arm sliding around her waist to tuck her against him, the echo of everything she felt tumbling from him in waves.
Kopi chirped, taking off from the wall to fly out over the gardens, the setting sun turning him into nothing more than a tiny, elated shadow as they watched him disappear into the dusk. Behind them, their friends laughed at something Kej said, the sound of their happiness like chiming bells in the warm evening air.
Zylah rested her head against Holt’s chest, her heart full, at peace. Listened to her mate’s steady heartbeat, a sound she would never, ever take for granted. She breathed in his earthy acani berry scent and touched her glass gently against his, her voice thick with everything she felt.
For him. For their friends. For the ones they’d lost.
For this moment together. “To living free.”