He sat forward in his chair. The chair wobbled with the weight shift. “I’d rather be on a beach with you somewhere, safe and sound,” he said. “If our lives weren’t so dangerous, I would’ve already asked you about becoming dual-mages. We’re perfect together. There is only one true pairing for me, and that’s you. Nature has made it that way. Please believe me, Penny, the only reason I’ve held off is because I’m afraid for you. But that fear has shifted, and I worry that I might be doing you harm. There’s just…” He shrugged. “I can’t strategize like Darius. It seems I’m doomed to blindness when it comes to what’s actually best for you.”

“You are best for me,” I said softly, resting my fingers on the edge of the box. “You’re best. I will be your dual-mage, and as soon as we’ve dated for another couple years and my mother has stopped harassing us, I’ll be your wife. And your life partner, in case you didn’t realize that was the same thing.”

Relief washed over his face before a smile lit him up, sparkling in his gorgeous blue eyes, like the Milky Way on a clear night. He stood slowly, and I held my breath as he walked around the card table and knelt by my side. He lifted the ring box gently before extracting the beautiful power stone ring and reaching for my hand.

I shoved it at him eagerly, my heart full to bursting. The feeling of connection, both with Emery and the universe, was taking over, softening the headache that had been throbbing the moment before.

“I can’t believe I’ve gotten this lucky,” he said under his breath, gently encircling my ring finger with the metal. He shook his head slightly. “I feel like I’m going to wake up at any moment.”

I ran my free hand down his cheek. He looked up, his eyes glassy.

“I was thinking the same thing just a moment ago,” I said, laughing through the tears.

He chuckled as well, holding my gaze as he slipped the ring down my finger. “Penelope Bristol… Turdswallop”—we both laughed a little harder—“will you join with me in a dual-mage partnership that will connect us magically for the rest of our lives?”

“Yes,” I said softly, resting my hand on his shoulder.

He paused with the ring almost all the way down my finger. “Wait…should I hold off on the ring until we’re ready for it? Just because of your mother and her—”

“Yes,” I said, laughing harder. “If I’d had any doubts that you were the perfect guy for me, that just cemented it. Can you imagine? She’d go between anger that I was promising myself to you so soon, and anger that we were waiting so long to actually have a ceremony. We’d end up just eloping for some peace.”

He was still frozen with the ring nearly on my finger. His eyes dipped down, and I could tell he wanted to slide it on the rest of the way. That he worried this was his one chance, and if he didn’t seal the deal now, he might not get another opportunity.

“It’ll be more special if I’ve never actually worn it before,” I whispered. “And just think, you’ll have more time and freedom to come up with a nicer table and a couple chairs that don’t want to break when they’re sat in.”

His smile stretched and he looked up, hopefully getting the assurance he needed. He nodded before pulling the ring away with obvious regret.

“It’s perfect, though,” I said, feeling my own regret. “I like the feel of it. And the color.”

“It’s unique.” He fitted the ring in the box but left the lid open. “And more powerful for it. Just like you.”

I fell into his kiss then, soaking in the passion and emotion we both felt, roaming my hands over his hard body. I was desperate for us to explore these feelings further in our room. But he backed off and glanced at the far corner of the garage by the door, where a moveable Asian-style divider was set up.

“Shall we?” He stood, his eyes so deep that I could see all the way to his overflowing soul.

In perfect trust, I let him help me up and then followed him to the corner, where he folded the divider and set it aside. A wave of nervousness washed through me upon seeing a black cauldron. Next to it sat a stack of marked and labeled containers.

“Wow. Prepared.” I rubbed at my butterfly-infested stomach, remembering the last time I’d done a potion. As Reagan and the Bankses would never let me forget, I’d accidentally turned a bunch of witches into zombies. “We’re sure we have the right spell, and all the ingredients are fresh…and everything?”

“Darius is the prepared one. More so since the goblin incident. This station has been kept in a constant state of readiness. As for the spell…” He moved around the side, looking for something. Not finding it, he turned in a circle, scanning the storage shelves and Darius’s desk across the way. Looking around the cauldron area again, he clucked his tongue and stepped toward a black binder that sat propped up on the shelf. “Right in front of my face.”

Flipping the binder open, he read the first page before his brow furrowed. He moved on to the second page, then the third, running his finger down and across the lines, taking it all in.

“It’s that long, huh?” I asked, wanting to step closer and get a look—and also wanting to keep my distance.

“No…these are…other spells.” Emery flicked the pages, pausing a moment on each. When he reached the spell he was looking for, he tapped it once and then went back to look at a few others. “These are…advanced spells. Extremely complex. They’d need a crap-load of power to complete.”

“Which he assumes we’ll have after we become dual-mages?” I finally moved closer. As I scanned the page, magic sifted and twisted around me, ruffling my hair and caressing my skin. Whispered words seeped out of the darkness in my mind, and various words lifted off the page in sparkling color.

I’d read a good few spells in the last year, the ones from Reagan more complex than most, and voices had never whispered in my mind before.

I took a step back. “Something is wrong with those spells.”

“Why?” Emery flicked a page before looking at me. Whatever he saw erased the good or analytical mood he’d been in. “Let’s get working.”

With smooth economy, he took the lid off a large container marked distilled water. After sloshing that into the cauldron, he set up the binder on a spell stand a couple feet from the cauldron, leaving it open to the dual-mage potion directions. That done, he read them over, then checked the ingredients again. He was no novice when it came to creating potions.

“Okay,” he said, motioning me closer to the binder. “At first, this will be a potion like any other. Feel the intent and follow the steps accordingly. About three-quarters of the way in, you’ll start to feel a tug…about here.” He put his palm to the bottom of his ribcage, the place where I’d often felt a tug while doing magic.

I nodded to show I was following.

“That’s the start of the actual connection. That tug will seem to be connected…” His hand drifted out, and stopped at the same place on me, prompting a gush of warmth. It moved back to him. “You’ll feel the first connection to me.”

It was hard to breathe with all the heart swelling and belly flutters and excitement, not to mention the fear I’d severely screw up and turn him into something awful, so I just nodded again.

“The feeling will increase as we move on. With…” Sorrow moved in his eyes and he cleared his throat. “With my brother, it was an exciting feeling, like collaborating on an intense new project. But I’ve heard dual-mages feel different things. I’ve never heard of it being a negative experience.”

I licked my lips, knowing nothing I dabbled in ever came out normally. “Let’s hope we’re not the first.”

A smile tickled his lips. He must’ve read my mind, because he bent and ran his lips across mine. “We’ll be fine.”

His thumb slid a trail of fire across my chin before he went back to the binder.

“Toward the end, the intensity will dramatically increase. That’s when our magic will fuse, as it were. We’ll both feel an increase in our normal power level, as well as little details and variances from the other person. Good and bad, I’ll share what I’ve got going on, and you’ll share what you’re working with.” His hand moved back and forth between us.