For once, they agreed on something.
“I want to go home,” Marina whispered.
His response reached her before he spoke: a flash of sympathy, quickly buried.
“Then we’ll go to your home.” His voice was stiff. Controlled again, barely. “Because apparently, where you go, I go. For the next twenty-eight days.”
Marina looked at the ruined contract, the scattered coffee cups, the sea of staring faces. A vampire in the crowd was taking notes. A harpy whispered something to her companion, not even pretending to hide her amusement.
Her career. Her reputation. Gone.
She looked at the man she was now magically bound to: this beautiful, awful stranger who made her feel too much and saw her too clearly. Alessandro Draven, she remembered now. The Draven heir. The dragon Estelle had warned her about.
For when the dragon comes, her grandmother’s book had said.And he will come.
He had come.
This is the worst day of my life.
His misery echoed hers through the bond.
At least they had that in common.
Chapter Four
Two flights down, past gawking staff and a service corridor that hadn’t seen new paint since the Truman administration, Alessandro hauled the baker (Marina, her name was Marina, and her irritation prickled at the edge of his consciousness like static) toward the only person in this building qualified to fix what they’d done.
The hotel’s supernatural legal consultant was a centuries-old lich named Mortimer. He operated out of a basement office that, by reputation, smelled of formaldehyde and regret. Marina protested the entire way down, loudly enough to wake the dead. Given where they were headed, that seemed appropriate.
“This is kidnapping,” she said for the fourth time.
“This is problem-solving.” He didn’t slow down. “There’s a difference.”
“The difference being?”
“Kidnapping implies I want you here. I assure you, I don’t.”
Through the bond, he felt her anger spike: hot and sharp, undercut by hurt she was trying to hide. He ignored it.
Control. Solve the problem. Move on.
Mortimer’s door was marked with symbols that glowed faintly in the dim corridor. Alessandro knocked once and entered without waiting for a response.
The lich looked up from a desk covered in legal texts and what appeared to be someone’s preserved spleen. His eye sockets glowed pale blue. His suit was immaculate.
“Mr. Draven.” The voice was surprisingly pleasant for something that had been dead for three centuries. “I heard there was an incident upstairs. I assumed you’d be visiting.”
“How did you—” Marina started.
“News travels fast in supernatural circles, Ms. Pearl.” Mortimer gestured to two chairs that definitely hadn’t been there a moment ago. “Please. Sit. And try not to touch anything.”
Alessandro sat. Marina hesitated, her resistance pressing back, the desire to flee sharp and unmistakable, before dropping into the chair beside him. The bond hummed with relief as the distance between them decreased.
Twenty-eight days of this. Twenty-eight days of feeling everything she feels.
“Show me the contract,” Mortimer said.
Alessandro produced the ruined parchment from his jacket. The coffee stains had dried into the ancient paper, creating patterns that seemed almost deliberate. The symbols still glowed faintly when he touched them.
