“Hold on.” I sat straight up as I did a mental enumeration of the cast she’d described. “ Everyone  was there? Jill  was there?”

“That wasn’t part of the plan,” she said quickly, sitting up beside me. “That was improvisation from her and Angeline. And Trey too, I suppose.”

Imagining Sydney dying was beyond terrible. And in some ways, imagining Jill dying was even worse because I’d already seen it happen.

“Jill could’ve been killed,” I said. “We’re supposed to be keeping her safe!”

“I know, I know.” Sydney leaned against my shoulder. “I really didn’t want her to be there. Eddie was pretty upset too, though I’m not sure how he’s feeling now after she kissed him.”

“After she–what? Okay, we’ll come back to that. God, Sydney. Why didn’t you tell me any of this was going down?”

“Because you would’ve tried to stop me. Or tried to go yourself. Believe me . . . I’m sorry. I don’t want to keep things from you. Ever. I want complete honesty between us. I just want . . . well, I wanted you to be safe even more.” She snuggled closer. “Don’t tell me you don’t understand that logic.”

“Of course I understand it! And yes, I would’ve tried to stop you. Damn it, Sydney!” I caught hold of her hands and was surprised to find I was shaking. Again, terrible, bloody images of her flashed through my mind. “This isn’t the same as you running off to a witch’s tea party! This is life and death. If you’d been killed–if you’d left me–”

“I know,” she breathed. “I know.”

And suddenly, her arms were around me, her mouth crushing mine in a demanding kiss that chased away all other thoughts as she pushed me down on the bed. There was an urgency and intensity burning between us that I’d never felt before, and that was saying something, in light of our recent active sex life. Maybe it was this brush with death that was driving us to furiously prove we were alive. All I really knew for sure was that I needed her, that I needed to lose myself in passion and get as close to her as possible . . . so that I’d never lose her again.

She continued kissing me with that ferocity, so much so that her lips lightly scraped my teeth. It was only a few drops, but as the sweet, metallic taste of her blood touched my tongue, a blinding ecstasy flooded my body. She pulled back with a small gasp, and looking up at her in the fickle light, I could see an answering rapture on her features as the barest flush of Moroi endorphins seized hold of her. Her lips parted; her eyes were wide with desire. I knew then, without a doubt, that I could’ve brought her throat back to my fangs and that she would’ve let me sink them into her. I could have her blood and her body tonight, if I wanted. And I did  want it. The tease of her blood had me high and hungry, not just because it was blood–but because it was hers. Her essence. I yearned for that type of all‑consuming union with her, to have no boundaries left between us, to see her lost in the pleasures of an endorphin wave. She would’ve let me do it all. She might even want me to–or at least, the Sydney who’d accidentally gotten a brief rush of endorphins might want me to. The thing was, I couldn’t be sure that normal Sydney, no matter how much she loved me, wanted that. And until I was, it was a line we wouldn’t cross, despite how frenzied the thought made me.

She hovered over me for several more tense seconds, as we each fought our own inner battles. Then, the moment of temptation passed, and we were suddenly back on each other as though nothing had happened, with a fierceness that shattered the memory of her blood. I was awash on a sea of desire, drowning in everything about her. Her passion answered mine as she murmured my name and clung to me so tightly that her nails dug into my skin, as though she feared she might lose me if she let go.

Afterward, she collapsed at my side, still clinging to me as her ragged breathing slowed to normal. I draped an arm over her, my own heart beating frantically from what had just passed. I was no longer angry. Mostly I still felt scared at how close she’d come to death. But she was alive. I told myself that over and over as I tightened my arms around her. She was alive and safe. She wasn’t going anywhere.

And, to be honest, I had to admit I understood her reasoning for keeping me in the dark. I didn’t like it, but I understood it. If our roles were reversed, I would’ve done the same thing to protect her. It was also hard to judge when I’d done my own share of withholding secrets upon starting the mood stabilizer.

The last critical piece in all this was that their risk had paid off. I couldn’t deny the results. Olive’s blood had worked. Somehow, through our fumbling and guesswork, we’d actually created a magical vaccine against Strigoi. If only there were a way to replicate it.

“You know,” I mused, mulling over the story in my mind, “Angeline and Neil really put it all on the line tonight. I’ll never make fun of them again.”

“Never?” Sydney teased.

“Well, maybe not as much.”

“Eddie ‘put it all on the line’ too,” she reminded me.

“Yeah, I know, but that’s normal for him.” I then recalled her earlier words. “Wait. Did you say Jill kissed him?”

“Yup. It was actually very romantic, in a why‑did‑you‑just‑risk‑yourself‑you‑fool kind of way.” She paused. “Actually, it was kind of like what just happened with you and me.”

“It better not’ve been,” I growled.

“Okay. Let’s just say the motivations were sort of the same,” she corrected.

I sighed, making a mental note to have a talk with Jill tomorrow. “Seeing as everyone’s alive, I can acknowledge what a big deal this fiasco was. It’s going to blow their minds back at Court.”

“And tomorrow night we see Marcus and get to deliver the other  big deal,” she said. “Maybe this is all crazy enough to work.”

“It always is,” I said. I trailed my fingers along on her shoulder, which was damp with perspiration. As I moved upward to her neck, my fingers touched a fine metal chain and I discovered she hadn’t taken off everything. She still wore the wooden morning glory cross I’d made her, and somehow, that was sexier than if she’d been completely naked.

“Escape plan number forty‑five,” I said. “Join nudist colony in Fiji.”

“Do they have those in Fiji?”

“Well, they’ve got to be somewhere warm, right?”

The panic of losing her still burned within me, almost enough to urge me toward sex again. But as we lay there, talking throughout the night, it was our minds and spirits that ended up connecting. There was peace and joy in each other’s embrace, and the balance we brought to each other’s lives allowed me to drift into a deeper sleep than I’d had in a long time.

I didn’t know what questions she’d face the next day. The Ms. Terwilliger excuse went a long way, but surely Zoe would wonder what had kept Sydney out all night. Maybe Sydney could say they’d been up so late that she just stayed over on Jackie’s couch. Whatever it was, I could see from Sydney’s resolve the next morning that she would handle it. This was her battle, not mine.

She scoured the ingredients that Cassie had left behind and found enough to make us pancakes. I didn’t actually have any syrup, but I did have raspberry jam. We slathered it on the pancakes, and it was the best thing I’d ever tasted. And as we sat there at the kitchen table with our pancakes and coffee, Sydney reading news on her phone while I leafed through the poetry book, I knew without a doubt that I could do this for the rest of my life.

“Escape plan number seventy‑three,” I said. “Open a pancake restaurant in Sweden.”

“Why Sweden?”

“Because they don’t have pancakes there.”

“They do, actually.”

“Well, then, it looks like we’ve got our market already in place.”

Dropping her off at Amberwood was bittersweet, mostly because it ended the spell we’d been in since last night. We both had things to do, though, and I was going to see her later anyway.