EPILOGUE WELCOME TO HAPPILY EVER AFTER
EPILOGUE
WELCOME TO HAPPILY EVER AFTER
EMbrY WOODCROSS’S LIFE WAS CHARMED IN A DIFFERENT WAY these days.
She was still pretty, popular, and the queen bee of the Witch clique on the campus of Raven’s Head School for the Magically Gifted.
She’d starred in the fall musical—the show going on thanks to the excellent understudy work of Magda Vulcovic and August Bell—and reigned as head prefect from her private room and center table in the refectory.
Track season was on the horizon, and she had her sights set on winning the mile at state against magically inclined and normal competitors alike.
Valedictorian was still statistically possible, and even if she didn’t win that, she most definitely had the best daddy in the world—the competition wasn’t even close.
And, of course, she’d completed her Ascension and now was a full adult member of the Woodcross Coven of Ravenwood.
But some things still vexed her. Though these days that list never included Rye Knighton—boy next door and most likely her soulmate.
“You look absolutely perfect, Em,” he insisted while helping himself to a round of espresso in her kitchen, even though it was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon. “I don’t understand the problem.”
The problem was that though Embry had objectively the best wardrobe in all of Ravenwood, and possibly all of Maine, the paradox of choice had left her extremely undecided on what to wear today.
And they had exactly seven and a half minutes before they were to meet Ames and Fairfax by the lake on Raven’s Head’s grounds.
“That’s because masculine-presenting people have it easy, especially you,” Embry snapped, gesturing at the suit he’d worn to two proms, and potentially a third if she had her way in a few months and Oakley’s rule about nonstudents being eligible to attend dances still held.
Goddess, this man cleaned up nicely.
“If you don’t look like you’ve just rolled out of bed, everyone gives you a thumbs-up and a pat on the back.
Whereas I’ve been given no indication if a tea-length skirt is too casual, but floor-length seems like I’m trying too hard, and my only appropriate dress in between is black, and it’s a wedding, not a funeral.
I’d hate to ruin it by appearing too casual—”
In one smooth motion, Rye circled Embry with his arms, petite espresso mug discarded. “You look perfect. And anyone who questions your choice of outfit is either completely out of whack with their priorities, or just a tiresome twit.”
“Are you sure? Maybe I could text Ames real quick to see what she picked out.” She cast around the kitchen for the clutch she’d discarded on the counter, her phone somewhere inside, but Rye gently tilted her chin back toward him. He smiled until his eyes crinkled at the corners.
“Embry Woodcross, you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life, and even I know that everyone but me will be looking at the bride, not judging your outfit. That’s just the way of weddings.”
She bit her frown and felt herself soften into him. “But you won’t?”
Rye laughed softly. “No, I’ll be sneaking a peek at you every five seconds because even though I’m very happy for Jonesy and Merle, I have a weak constitution and terrible attention span when you’re anywhere in the vicinity.”
Embry couldn’t even pretend to frown at that. Her lips kicked up, even as she squinted at him, incredulous. “What if I’m standing right next to you?”
“I’m a goner. A total goner.”
Rye leaned in and captured her mouth with his, and Embry softened more, all her earlier frustration evaporated. He was right—what did it matter if she’d picked the right dress out of the hundred in her closet? She had him.
When Rye pulled away, he didn’t go far, brushing his nose against hers. “Do you have a decent spell for keeping my eyes on the ceremony?”
Embry forced down her sudden need for another kiss because then they would most definitely be late. Which would be way worse than the wrong length of skirt. And neither of them would do that to Jonesy.
“No, but considering Daddy is presiding over the affair, I suspect I won’t need a spell.
” She gathered his lapels in her hands and smoothed them down, and straightened his Windsor knot, although, for once, Rye’s attire didn’t look as if it’d gone through a meat grinder.
Even his shoes were polished. “He loves you like a son, but he’s definitely going to take issue with you watching me instead of the ceremony.
You won’t hear the end of it until we’re away at college. ”
“Hmm,” Rye mused. “Perhaps I can keep it together long enough to avoid such torture.”
“I told you it was worth it,” Embry said as the bride and groom stepped out on the dance floor inside Old Main, Jonesy with tears still streaming down her face—as they had been for the past hour—and Merle doing his best to hold it together for the both of them.
“Look how happy they are! And to think, this might never have happened without a little chance meeting at the Black Cat.”
She sighed dreamily, and Rye chuckled warmly while mounting his defense.
“If I remember correctly,” he started, plucking a fork off his empty plate and using it to tease at the icing remaining on her piece of wedding cake, “I didn’t say it wasn’t worth it, I just didn’t think perhaps you should spend time setting up perfectly capable adults while battling a potential murder conviction. ”
They could laugh about it now, with months in the rearview and Balthazar and the Hale family packed away in the Table’s highest security prison.
Inspector Brown and his team were still finding evidence of the group’s misdeeds not just in the United States and Romania, but in other far-flung vampire hotbeds.
Headmaster Martinelli, who was currently lurking in a corner with Merlin on her arm and a careful eye on the mixing of students and teachers in the dance hall, had been relieved to say the least that Raven’s Head was being lumped in with a greater scheme instead of obtaining a reputation as the place where the unthinkable happened.
Spreading out the unthinkable was ideal for heading off bad publicity.
Embry stole the fork and a glob of frosting right before it hit Rye’s lips.
Savoring it—Van and the pastry team at the Black Cat totally hit this wedding cake thing out of the park—she pointed the tines at his stupid, handsome face.
“Rye Knighton, you of all people should know I’m very good at multitasking.
Especially if the tasks in question are ones I feel very passionate about.
My freedom and the eternal quest for true love definitely qualify. ”
Rye wiped a smidgen of buttercream from her lips with his thumb, licked it off his own skin, and sighed. “You’re right, I should’ve known. Both about your abilities and that you were correct in matching our lonely empath drama teacher with a prickly, widower carpenter witch.”
Embry speared another smidge of frosting and presented the fork to Rye as if it were a little sugar-laden trophy.
“I appreciate a man who can admit when he’s wrong,” she said. Rye accepted the peace offering, and Embry grinned at him with her perfect head-prefect smile. “Especially when it’s about me being right.”
She didn’t indulgently fluff her hair, but that was only because it was tightly bound in a classic chignon.
“Is she bragging about setting them up again?” Ames asked, swinging in with a second helping of cake and Fairfax literally attached at the hip.
As it turned out, Ames had decided to wear the pink gown she hadn’t worn to the homecoming dance to the wedding.
Her little nod to their departed vampire friend and a chance to make sure Allegra’s gorgeous seamstress work saw the light of day.
Of course, Ames looked marvelous in the creation, and Fairfax’s suit details matched perfectly.
“It’s not bragging; it’s merely reminiscing on fact,” Embry answered, perhaps a little smugly. “Just like when I remind myself that I’m the reason you two have been a power couple since sophomore year.”
“You’re right. We had nothing to do with our own success, Em,” Ames deadpanned. “Just like the literal married people were simply puppets at your hand.”
“I didn’t say that.”
Fairfax tapped his temple. “But you thought it.”
“You know,” Rye interjected, very obviously trying to change the subject—but apparently not as far as Embry had anticipated because he continued, “I think perhaps we should turn Embry’s matchmaking talents on Alistair. What do you think?”
Rye chin-checked where their diviner friend stood in line for a drink, his handsome face drawn up as tight as the ascot at his throat as he watched Jonesy lead Merle in a waltz across the shiny parquet.
Alistair hadn’t been the same since everything went down in the fall.
Sure, he’d reenrolled and still went through the motions of lunch with the senior Witches, had won a state championship in the 200-meter freestyle during swim season, and was currently putting on a brave face to play Duke Orsino in the spring production of Twelfth Night (with Embry as Olivia and Ames as Viola), which would be on stage in a month.
Yet it was as if he were running on battery-saving mode. The light in his eyes seemed dim, his smiles slow, his laugh late to join in.
“You know, you could be onto something,” Embry replied. “Maybe that’s how I make up for breaking his heart. I find someone else for Alistair. Honestly, it’s probably the least I can do.”
Fairfax broke into a suave—yes, suave—cackle. “Considering your ‘least’ is more than ninety-nine percent of the population can achieve, I fear for that young man.”
The music ended, and Jonesy and Merle took a joint bow, their first dance at an end.
The entire table clapped after them as Lazarus Woodcross, wedding officiant extraordinaire, guided them to the DJ table—helmed by Mr. Heston and Miss Persephone of all teachers—for a discussion, apparently, about the upcoming music selection.
“I can’t decide if that’s sweet or sinister,” Ames added in the new quiet with a frown, her expertly curled lashes nearly touching as she inspected Alistair from across the way.
He’d gotten to the front of the drink line and was apparently ordering something so posh yet nonalcoholic that the bartender’s look of confusion snagged the interest of Skye Wolverton and her eternal need to butt in like a battering ram.
At least it appeared that she was “helping” solve the issue.
“It’s one thing when you didn’t realize he was in love with you; it’s another after you know you broke his heart. ”
“Hey, it was Rye’s idea, not mine,” Embry answered with a laugh as the speakers burped with the start of a new song. “I can’t help that matchmaking is both my talent and my noneducational, world-bettering calling.”
“Speaking of calling—the dance floor is calling me,” Fairfax announced, plucking his girlfriend’s plate out of her hands and drawing Ames to standing with him as dozens of voices chimed in to yell “CHOO CHOOO” all at once. “Let’s get on this train and ride it.”
Ames pretended to be angry about abandoning the single remaining bite of cake, but she and Fairfax hadn’t had a fight—real or fake—since the battle at Raven’s End, and she seemed both out of practice and out of interest in keeping up the pretense.
Her faux anger broke right away, her exaggerated frown popping into a grin as her boyfriend tugged her into a raucous crowd of Stitches, Glitches, Bitches, and Witches.
“This room is full of the most magically gifted beings on the entire Eastern Seaboard and literally no one is powerful enough to be impervious to this song played at a wedding, including me,” Rye mused, pushing out his chair and getting to his feet.
He bent forward, with a twinkle in his green eyes under the finger-combed riot of his sandy curls, offering his hand, palm-up, to Embry.
“May I have this dance, Embry Woodcross?”
She accepted his hand, trying to play it cool as she stood.
But when Embry lifted her gaze from their joined hands to the face she knew better than her own and loved more than anything, the witch’s entire body bloomed with a smile just for him.
Yes, her own eternal quest for true love was indeed over.
Only other people needed her talents from here on out.
“You may have me forever, Rye Knighton.”