“Or they’re going to kill each other.”
“Either way, we should probably stay out of blast radius.”
The kitchen fell quiet again.
Marina turned back to her mixing bowls, hyperaware of Alessandro watching her. The tension from yesterday hadn’t faded; if anything, Dante’s arrival had amplified it. Having someone else see them together made whatever was happening between them feel more real.
“She reads auras,” Alessandro said. “Your friend.”
“Among other things. She’s very talented.”
“What does a pink and gold spiral mean?”
Marina’s cheeks heated. “She’s probably exaggerating.”
“She seemed quite certain.”
“Bea is certain about everything. It doesn’t mean she’s right.”
The air between them shifted. He moved closer. His attention sharpened.
“Marina.”
She kept her eyes on the mixing bowl. “Yes?”
“Look at me.”
She shouldn’t. Looking at him led to moments like yesterday, when the world narrowed to the space between them and nothing else existed.
She looked anyway.
He was closer than she’d realized. Close enough that she could see the gold flecks in his dark eyes, the slight tension in his jaw, the careful control he was maintaining over whatever he was feeling.
His want was undisguised. Unashamed. It pressed against her awareness like heat from an open flame.
The easy thing—theMarinathing—would be to let the bond take the blame.The magic did it. The tether made me.But she’d lived inside this connection for eleven days now, and somewhere in there she’d gotten good at telling the difference between what the bond pushed on her and what was simply, inconveniently, hers.
This was hers.
“Dante will keep Bea occupied for hours,” he said. “They’ve been arguing about magical theory since he walked through the door.”
“That’s… good?”
“It means we’re alone.”
Her heart skipped. “Alessandro?—”
“I’ve been thinking about yesterday. About what almost happened.”
“We shouldn’t…”
“I know.” But he didn’t move away. “We shouldn’t complicate this. The bond is temporary. In twelve days, this ends.”
“Eleven,” she corrected automatically. “The full moon is in eleven days.”
“Eleven.” His hand came up, hovering near her face but not quite touching. “And I’ve spent every one of those days trying toconvince myself that this is just proximity. Just the bond. Just magic forcing feelings that aren’t real.”
“Is it working?”
