The silence turned sharp, and holy. Like something had cracked open between them.
“You said if I fulfill that need, you disappear.”
“I’m released.”
“Gone.”
“Yes.”
She gripped the blanket. “And if I pretend I don’t need it?”
“Then I remain,” he said. “But not whole. The longer the magic lingers past its end, the less I become. I’ll still be here. But not truly. You’d feel it. In every kiss. Every touch. It would be emptier.”
“So I either open my heart and lose you, or keep you and lose you, anyway.”
Ashar didn’t argue, and Blair let it settle into her bones like cold rain.
She looked around. The candles still burned, wax pooling at their bases. The sigil chalk on the floor had faded. Almost gone.
“You said it was cruel.”
“Most old magic is,” he said. “It doesn’t reward desire. It tests it. Reveals it.”
“What if I wanted to break the spell now? Cut the thread.”
“You’d pay a price.”
“What kind?”
Ashar met her eyes. Something ancient flickered there, beautiful and terrible.
“You’d lose something permanent. A memory. A truth. A piece of who you are.”
She shivered. “That’s dramatic.”
“It’s magic.”
“And if I choose wrong?”
“It’s not about right or wrong. It’s about what it costs.”
She looked at him.
At the man, not-man, who had wrecked her body and was slowly unraveling her heart.
“How do I know you’re worth it?”she asked.
“You don’t,” he said. “You decide.”
She lay down beside him. The blanket was warm, but not enough. “You know, I thought having a sex demon would be a lot more straightforward.”
Ashar huffed a laugh. “You summoned the complicated kind.”
She turned to him, fully. “No. I think I summoned exactly what I needed.”
And for the first time, the fear in her voice eased, not gone, but softened. They stayed there, silent, as the last candle died, and with it, something unnamed in the room dimmed too.
Blair dreamed of fire. Not the soft, warm kind. Not the Ashar kind. This fire was cruel. Cold at the edges. It didn’t burn, it consumed. It licked across her skin and whispered in a voice that sounded like him: None of this is real. You’ll wake up alone.
