many emotions passed over his face that I couldn’t have named them if I tried. There was surprise, for sure, happiness in the tentative curve of his lips, even relief in the way he sighed.
I hated that one. I hated that I’d waited this long to tell him, that I’d given him reason to doubt.
But I didn’t dwell on it, because the most dominant emotion of all, the one that shone most clearly from his eyes, was love.
“I love you, Evie.” There was that honey voice I lived to hear. And then he was kissing me.
Alec drew me up against his chest, making me lift onto my toes as I wrapped my arms around his neck and held on. I was never letting go again.
He kissed me deeply—as if we had all the time in the universe. As if the billions of stars shining down on us would just have to wait until we were done expressing our love.
The next morning, I slept in. Alec and I had thrown caution to the wind—or the light summer breeze, as it were—and made love under the stars.
Love! Because he loved me and I loved him and I’d told him. Finally!
We’d crawled back into bed in the wee hours of the morning and told each other again before falling asleep.
I woke up with a smile on my face, alone on the futons with bright sunlight streaming in.
Ethan was in the kitchen with Mr. Takata’s cousin, getting a lesson in traditional Japanese cookery. He looked even more giant in the small space but managed not to knock anything over. As he delivered a traditional breakfast of rice, miso soup, and grilled fish, Alec and Josh wandered into the main room.
“Morning!” Josh gave me a kiss on the top of my head and kept heading for the door. “We’re going for a run.”
I mumbled around a mouthful of food, gesturing for them to wait. I wanted to go for a run too.
Tyler plopped down next to me. “Just eat, baby. I’ll go with you later.”
I grumbled but kept eating.
Alec kissed the same spot Josh had. “We won’t be long. Love you.”
“Love you too!” I called after him, smiling like an idiot over my food as he walked out.
Tyler kissed me on the cheek softly and gave me a wide smile, but he didn’t comment.
I spent most of the day with Mr. Takata and his grandmother, asking all the questions I could think to ask. Her answers were rooted in myth and tradition. She couldn’t give me scientific explanations for how my glowing Light worked and why I had it, but she told me all the stories her mother and grandmother had told her.
She impressed upon me the significance of this “gift.” Through both her stories and her straightforward explanations, she told me what I was capable of—the immense amounts of Light I could channel; the remote transfers; the ability to draw from one Variant and give to another, temporarily giving them the other’s ability.
She also explained the responsibility that came with having this gift. She spoke candidly about her own experiences of draining the Light from a Variant, taking their ability and killing them in the process.
“There is a reason we have this ability,” she explained. “It would not be possible for us to do this if there was no purpose for it, but it must not be taken lightly. You have great power, Evelyn, but you must wield it wisely.”
Practically speaking, she didn’t give me any new information about what I could do. I’d experienced this all for myself, short of actually killing someone by draining them dry. But she confirmed many of my theories, and talking with someone who truly understood what I was going through was beyond satisfying.
She also told me the glow was a visual representation of my power, a beacon to draw people to my side.
I’d already seen evidence of that: the way Mr. Takata had devoted himself to me without even knowing me, the way strangers had come to my defense on countless occasions—when I was attacked at Bradford Hills, when I glowed the night of the formal evening in Manhattan, even when Rick had risked his life to warn me of the danger I was in from Davis’s plans. And that wasn’t even counting all the emails and private messages I’d received from Variants and Vitals all over the world.
Yes, the likelihood of a lot of those being fake was high, but I could feel in my gut