Marina didn’t respond. Her eyes were on the second-floor windows, where flames now danced behind glass. Her bedroom. Her memories. Her grandmother’s recipe book.
Wait.
She’d moved it. After they got it back from Malachar, she’d hidden it somewhere safer.
But her pelt. The realization struck.
Her pelt was still up there. In the trunk in her closet. The part of herself she’d been slowly learning to reclaim.
And Malachar had known exactly where she kept it.
“He planned this,” she breathed. “This wasn’t about the bakery. This was about getting to my apartment while we were distracted.”
Alessandro’s expression shifted to horror. “Your pelt…”
“He has it. He has to have it.” Marina’s legs gave out. She would have fallen if Alessandro hadn’t caught her. “He said he’d skin me. He said he’d use my pelt as a rug. And now?—”
“We’ll get it back.” Alessandro’s arms were around her, dragon-heat radiating from his skin. His control was slipping. “Whatever it takes. We’ll get it back.”
“You shield me in danger.” She met his eyes. “You’d die for me. I know that.”
“Of course I would.”
“But dying for someone isn’t the same as listening to them.” She pulled away from his arms. “I told you he was planning something. I told you we needed to prepare. And you said we’d handle it, and then we went back to awkward silence instead of making actual plans.”
“Marina…”
“I can’t do this anymore.” The words came out broken. “I can’t be with someone who only sees me when I’m in danger. Who only hears me when I’m screaming. I need someone who sees me when I’m just… me. Quiet and careful and concerned about things that haven’t exploded yet.”
He had no answer.
She was right, and they both knew it.
“The crystal shop,” she said. “Bea’s apartment shares a wall with mine. The bond will hold at that distance.”
“You’re leaving?”
“I’m creating space.” She looked at him, really looked, and saw the man she loved crumbling under the weight of everything he’d done wrong. “Four days until the full moon. Maybe that’s enough time for both of us to figure out what we actually want.”
She walked toward Bea’s shop, where purple crystals gleamed in windows and chaos magic still lingered in the air.
Behind her, the bakery burned. Alessandro stood alone in the ashes of everything they’d built.
And somewhere in the town, Malachar had her pelt.
Marina climbed the stairs to Bea’s apartment and closed the door behind her.
The space was small but warm: crystals on every surface, herbs drying from the ceiling, the particular chaos that was pure Bea. A spare bedroom with a narrow bed and purple sheets waited for her, already made up.
Bea must have known this was coming. Of course she had. She always knew.
Marina sat on the edge of the bed and pressed her hands to her face.
Her pelt was gone. Her bakery was damaged. And the man she loved was forty-seven feet away, close enough to satisfy the bond, far enough to feel like a different world.
She lay down and stared at the ceiling. Through the dampened bond, she felt Alessandro finally settle. His grief. His guilt. And underneath it all, a quiet resolution that hadn’t been there before.
She reached back, just for a moment. Just enough to let him know she was still there.
