“I’m trying.”
“I know.” He touched her wrist. “And that’s why I’m still here.”
Blair swallowed. “What happens if I try to keep you past the need?”
His jaw flexed. “The bond starts to unravel.I start to glitch. Fade. Become something lesser.”
“Will I notice?”
“You’ll feel it in the kiss first,” he said softly. “Then in the silence after.”
She looked down at the chalk runes, glowing faintly like embers before a storm.
“Why did you come, Ashar? Really.”
He brushed a thumb across her knuckles.
“Because you didn’t just want sex,” he said. “You wanted someone who saw you. Someone who wouldn’t leave the second it got inconvenient. And for the first time, so did I.”
Blair blinked fast. “Wait. Are you saying you manifested me?”
He laughed. “No. But I think your ache matched mine. Perfectly enough to pull me through.”
She nodded slowly.
Then whispered: “So what happens if we fall in love?”
The lights flickered.
Ashar’s expression turned solemn.
“Then the spell ends,” he said. “Because the need becomes a choice. And magic can’t survive choice. Only ache.
Blair’s breath slowed under the weight of the blanket he’d pulled over them. Ashar was close, but not touching. Not yet.
His stillness always unsettled her, like he knew how to wait, like he’d done it before.
“I wasn’t always like this,” she said into the hush.
Ashar turned his head.
“I used to believe in signs,” she whispered. “Moon phases, Candle spells, Soulmates. That if you loved hard enough, you could change the ending.”
He said nothing.
“I made vision boards,” she went on, the words almostlaughable. “Pinned wedding dresses, Moonstone ring, Couples laughing in rainstorms.”
Ashar’s gaze held hers, steady, unflinching.
“I don’t think she exists anymore. That girl.”
“What happened to her?” His voice was soft, but heavy.
Blair shrugged, and the blanket slipped off her shoulder. “She got tired of being, almost. Of loving first. Of being the stopover on someone else’s way to figuring it out.”
Her voice cracked, but just a little. Ashar reached out and brushed a damp curl from her cheek, like she was still an altar.
“You’re not her anymore,” he said.
