Imogen can feel Emma curled beside her, not quiet, a sort of ecstatic presence — the feeling that comes with a first kiss. There will be endless firsts for Emma now that she’s part of Imogen’s world. Imogen always loved this place, but loving Emma grew and grew until she couldn’t imagine getting through life without Emma in lockstep, like two girls walking alongside a river. Now the fight that she’s been raging against time, against two worlds, goes quiet, a river settling back into its banks.

The Grays are waiting for Danny.

A ring of them, eyes wide and pained with hope. Hawthorn has her arms crossed tight, as if she doesn’t want to let this moment in. June staggers forward a single step, pain clawing its way over her hopeful expression, and Lelia holds her up with a linked arm. Rush is running toward Danny.

Looking at Danny the way she used to look at Imogen.

Guilt and jealousy and relief flicker through Imogen, all at once.

Rush is the first one to speak. Rush is never the first one to speak. “Did you . . . ? Was she . . . ?”

Imogen can feel it in that moment, stretched long with anticipation. They haven’t stopped missing her. They haven’t let her go, even though she kept so much of herself as close and quiet as a secret.

She thought that finding Emma meant losing the Grays forever.

She was beautifully wrong.

Danny: Now

When I leave the faerie ring, the Grays greet me with a trembling kind of need. I don’t know what to say. Where to start. Everything has changed inside of me, but the world looks exactly the same.

Including Imogen, walking in a circle, blank-eyed.

I run to her, a burning deep in my stomach. I grab Imogen by the shoulders and try to remind her what whole feels like. Remind her that she did the same thing for me, in a place that is very far away and probably right where we’re standing.

I push forward, toward her pale lips. I tip my breath into her mouth, and I tell myself that I will stop in less than a second if this doesn’t work. But her lips come awake against mine. Automatically at first, then slowly, knowingly, she dives into the kiss until she’s taken everything she needs from me.

Then she leans back, holding me by the arms.

Imogen is red-haired and dark-eyed, with cream-top skin and a way of twisting her lips that makes the feelings flood deep inside my chest. She is everything that everyone has told me.