Page 143 of The Amber Sunburst

It felt like something he’d been waiting forever for finally settled in him. He’s always been hers, but he never thought that she’d want him to be. And now?

Now he doesn’t know what to think. But hopefully he will in, like, ten seconds when they reach the training rooms.

“Do you feel stable enough to spar?” Eudoxia asks.

“I’m stable. The stablest.”

Eudoxia shakes her head fondly. “Sometimes I wonder if you hear the words that come out of your mouth.”

“I do. Usually only after I’ve said them, though.”

“So how do you decide what to say?”

“Whatever’s in my brain,” he lies. If he really said whatever was in his brain, he would have confessed to her years ago.

“Get on the mat. Let’s do this.”

He assumes a ready position across from her.

Before the first punch is even thrown, Zeno can feel something is different about this spar. It’s vibrating, charged, electric, in a way it’s never been. There’s static in the air that shocks him every time they touch. It tells him that all of this is leading somewhere. Where else would all that energy go?

Eudoxia grabs his shoulders to knee him in the stomach, but he steps back just in time. He goes to pull her arm behind her back, but she ducks under and uses the momentum to shove him sideways.

It continues like this—push and pull and push and pull—until they knock each other to the ground, Zeno holding Eudoxia’s hands above her head. She’s almost completely immobile, with her legs held down by Zeno’s knees. It doesn’t feel awkward, the closeness. It just feels right.

“Looks like I win,” he says, and a fire ignites in her eyes. Before he knows it he’s flipped onto his back, with a very smug Eudoxia leaning over him. Her hair must have fallen out of its bun at some point because now it hangs long over her left shoulder.

Her smirk kicks all of the fight out of him. She wins. She always will, with him.

He can’t stop himself. He slowly drifts his knuckles down her face, watching her victorious look fade into something more contemplative, and suddenly the world has shrunk to just the two of them.

“Xia,” he says, but he doesn’t have anything to follow it up with. The way she’s looking at him shuts him right up. He recognizes the expression.

It’s the one on his face whenever he looks at her.

She presses a hand to his shoulder and plants the other by his head to balance herself as she leans closer. Forms, she’s beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

He wants to ask if she knows what she does to him. Does she see how her gaze can set him alight? Is his skin burning her with the heat of it? Somewhere in his reverie, his hands wander to her waist and she moves so close their noses are almost touching.

He’s frozen. If he moved his face up just an inch, they’d be kissing, but instead they just breathe each other’s air. She is honey and pepper, spicy and bitter and sweet. He wants to devour her.

Their eyes are so close he can see her pupils dilate and he can’t help it.

“I love you,” he whispers.

She stills completely, and Zeno’s not sure if she’s breathing at all. Then she slides her hand to his collarbone, his neck, his cheek with focused intention.

“Is that one of the things you say without hearing it first?” she asks.

“I’ve been hearing that in my head since the second I first saw you.”

He wants to regret the confession, especially when she stills again like she doesn’t know what to say, but he can’t. If this ruins their friendship, he’ll never forgive himself. But if she feels the same…

“Eudoxia—” he starts, but she interrupts him.

“I love you, too,” she whispers, so quiet that, if they weren’t forehead to forehead, he wouldn’t have heard it.

His heart stops.