“No,” Blair agreed. “Now I’m the girl who jokes about hallucinating demons so I won’t get attached.”
For a moment, neither of them moved. The candlelight flickered across the walls, shadows long and reaching.
Then she said it. “You need to know something.”
Ashar didn’t look away. “That you’re afraid?”
She swallowed. “That you’re not real.”
He didn’t flinch. “You think this is your mind protecting itself.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
He exhaled slowly. “Then let me tell you something, too.”
Her heart skipped.
“The spell that summoned me, it wasn’t meant to last.”
The air changed. The warmth between them shifted into something tighter, thinner.
“What do you mean?” she asked, every word heavier than the last.
Ashar looked away, not from shame, but from restraint, like he needed time to find the right truth. “I’m not a wish.Your loneliness didn’t create me. I was called. And calling has rules.”
She sat up a little, the blanket bunching in her lap. “Rules like expiration dates?”
He gave a small, sad smile. “Magic that strong doesn’t last forever. It’s tied to your soul’s need. When that need is met, truly, deeply, I go back.”
“Back where?”
“Wherever I came from. The space between. The Before.”
She blinked. “How long?”
“Three days,” he said. “Maybe a little more. The veil thins around Samhain, Halloween, as it’s called here. Magic unravels.”
Blair looked at her hands; they didn’t feel like hers anymore.
“So what, you’re like a magical one-night stand with a three-day refund policy?”
“You’re making jokes,” Ashar said.
She gave a bitter laugh. “It’s that or panic.”
He waited. She didn’t speak. So he did.
“You didn’t summon me with words,” he said. “You summoned me with need. It was deep, old, it called to me. I followed it.”
Blair looked at him. “What was the need?”
He hesitated. Then said quietly: “You asked for someone who would stay.”
The world tilted.
“That’s it?” she whispered.
He nodded. “That’s everything.”
