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“Never the Cab, always the Merlot,” Seb agrees, tipping a wink in my direction.
EPILOGUE
LEO
2 Months Later
Iwake early in the morning because I can feel that Anna isn’t in bed next to me. She snuck into my room after midnight and lay curled up in my arms for hours, her breathing heavy, deep, and peaceful.
While our parents have finally accepted that we’re in love and intend to be together, they’re not quite ready for shared rooms on our joint family vacation.
This cabin belongs to Uncle Miko. That of course means that it’s located in the darkest and loneliest bit of forest imaginable, tucked up against the mountains. We’re on a little spit of land, surrounded on three sides by a lake as black and glossy as a mirror, and on the other by towering pines.
The cabin could be a witch’s house with its steeply pitched roof, rough-hewn logs, and continually smoking chimney. It’s large enough to fit both the Wilks and my branch of the Gallos quite comfortably.
Still, Anna and I can never be completely comfortable when we’re apart. That’s why she’s crept into my room every night so she can get the rest she needs asleep on my chest.
It almost makes me dread going back to Kingmakers. I asked Anna if we should get married instead, and start our lives together. She considered for a long time.
“I want to be married to you,” she said at last, her clear blue eyes fixed on mine. “I want it desperately. But I also want to be the best wife for you, the best partner. The empire we’ll build together . . . it will eclipse anything anyone has done before. If we finish our education first.”
I knew she was right, though I hated to admit it.
“Three more years . . .” I sighed.
“We’ll be there together,” Anna said, intertwining her fingers with mine.
Now she’s wandered off before the sun is up, and I know that means she’s troubled. My restless love can never be still when there’s something on her mind.
I slip out of bed, pulling a thick sweater over my bare torso and shoving my feet in battered sneakers. I creep downstairs and out onto the wraparound porch, where I spot Anna sitting on the edge of the moss-covered rocks, her bare toes dipping in the lake.
She looks pale as a ghost, dressed only in a nightgown with her long sheaf of silver-blonde hair trailing in the water.
I take the woolen blanket off the porch swing and bring it down to her, wrapping it around her slim shoulders. She tilts her chin up and kisses me, her lips cool against my warm mouth.
“We go back to school in only a few weeks,” she says.
“Did you change your mind?”
“No,” she shakes her head. “I just wonder what will happen . . .”
“What do you mean? What are you afraid of happening?”
“I don’t know . . .” She gazes out over the black water blanketed with mist. “I think this year will be different. When we started out at Kingmakers it was difficult, but it was new and exciting. I have a feeling things are about to get a whole lot darker . . .”
“Darker than almost drowning the last week of school?” I laugh.
Anna looks at me, somber and serious.
“Yes,” she says.
I kiss her again, longer this time.
“I’ll be right by your side,” I tell her. “I’ll always protect you.”
“I know,” she says. “I’m not afraid of anything when I have you, Leo.”
We sit side by side with my arm around her until the first morning light burns the mist away, and the lake turns from black to navy to pink, the sky streaked with orange. The birds make strange and mournful cries across the water.
