Marina was quiet. Then, lower: “I told you about my pelt. On the dock. The trunk in my closet, two years untouched.”
He nodded. He remembered every word.
“What I didn’t tell you,” she said, “is that some mornings I stand at that closet with my hand on the latch and still can’t open it. The sea’s right there. My own skin is right there. And I just… don’t.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “So. You, pouring your whole life into a search you can’t stop. Me, a closet door I can’t open. Different shapes of the same thing. We’re both experts at avoiding what might actually help.”
“That sounds exhausting too.”
The corner of her mouth lifted. “Someone told me you just need a cookie.”
He laughed before he could stop himself. Real, surprised, completely unauthorized.
And something between them sang.
Not a metaphor. An actual vibration in his sternum, like a tuning fork struck against bone.
Marina’s eyes widened.
“What was that?”
“I don’t know.”
They stood there, inches apart, the kitchen full of honey cake batter and morning light. He couldn’t stop noticing things: the flour on her nose, her parted lips, the charge in the air between them.
He should step back. Maintain distance. Remember that this was temporary.
Instead, he reached out and brushed a strand of hair from her face.
The touch sparked like lightning between them. She gasped. Her surprise jolted through him, and underneath it, desire that matched his own.
She wants this too.
“Alessandro—”
The timer went off.
They jerked apart like teenagers caught by parents. Marina turned to the oven, face flushed, movements unsteady. Alessandro gripped the counter and tried to remember how to breathe normally.
“The cakes,” she said, her voice too high. “I should check the cakes.”
“Yes. The cakes. Important.”
She pulled the honey cakes from the oven, perfectly golden, filling the kitchen with sweetness, and they spent the next hour decorating in careful silence.
But the bond hummed between them, carrying everything they weren’t saying. Every accidental brush of fingers. Every moment when they stood too close and neither moved away.
That night, Alessandro lay on the couch and stared at the ceiling.
The honey cakes had been delivered to their customer, a selkie family celebrating a daughter’s graduation, who’d looked at Alessandro with knowing smiles that made him uncomfortable. The bakery had been closed, every surface wiped down, every tray put away in the order Marina had taught him. She’d gone upstairs with a quiet “goodnight” and a look that said more than words could.
He should be thinking about the curse. About the calls from David he’d ignored, five more since this morning, each voicemail more urgent than the last. About the quarterly projections that would show another catastrophic loss. About Malachar’s silence, which was somehow more unsettling than his calls.
Instead, he was thinking about Marina’s laugh.
The way it had transformed her face. The way it had made his dragon rumble with something that felt dangerously like contentment. The way the bond had sung when they’d laughed together, really laughed, for the first time.
Eighteen days, he thought.
But this time, the number didn’t bring relief.
