She tilted her head to the side, thoughtfully this time. But still, not a word from her.

“Because you were also right about us,” I soldiered on, though I was beginning to feel like I was maybe going to wither under this unyielding onslaught of silence. “You and me, I mean. I could very easily more-than-like you, too. And I . . . Talia, honestly, I think I already do.”

Nothing but quiet scrutiny, from the darkness that hid her crystalline eyes.

“Talia, please, will you just say something,” I begged. “I’m dying here.”

“Why are you doing this, Emmy?” she said, low and a little hoarse, nothing at all like that controlled tone she’d been using until now. “I need to know. Because it can’t be just about me—I’m not making that mistake again, especially not with you. There has to be something else here for you. Something besides us.”

“That’s the thing. There is,” I said, my heart skipping a beat at this thaw, because here it was—she was finally giving me an opening. “Remember how I knew it was raining, before we . . . the night of the séance? Turns out it wasn’t the mantle, after all.”

I explained the communion with Thistle Grove, and the role the Harlows played in distilling the lake’s magic for everyone else to use. How my intimate knowledge of the town had even helped me secure our victory for her.

“How interesting,” she said once I was done, in an unwitting echo of her mother. “And you’re right, it’s the very pinnacle of bullshit that no one even knows the Harlows are our power plant. If it were me, I would want everyone to know. Shit, I’d want some kind of tithe imposed on the rest of us.”

“I was thinking I’d start by including it in my Arbiter’s account,” I said. “So future Harlows never have to doubt their worth, their intrinsic value to this town. And that’s not the only thing, either. It’s . . .”

I lapsed for a moment, trying to explain what had happened to my dreams for myself, what being back in this town had done to my heart. What Delilah, in her tart, blunt way, had helped me realize.

“It’s that I do love it here,” I finished. “For its own sake. That it’s everything I remember, but better, even more. Even if it weren’t for being its voice . . . I want this to be my place again. I want this to be my town.”

“And you really think it’ll be enough for you?” she asked, and now I heard the barely restrained urgency roiling beneath the surface of her voice, the desperate, surging hope that matched my own. “Enough, forever, to make you stay?”

“More than enough,” I said, my hand tightening on hers. “Especially if it means I get to be with you.”

Her lips curving, she leaned in to kiss me, sending joy roaring through me like a flash fire. I wound both arms around her neck, and for a moment we just swayed together, mouth to mouth, heedless of the music, caught up in nothing but each other, fireworks exploding vast and golden in my chest.