They sat with everything unsaid between them. The kitchen had gone quiet: Estelle pretending to study her tea, Dante and Bea tactfully absorbed in their argument about ward configurations. Giving them space. Giving them a moment that felt private even in a crowded room.
Then Marina reached across the table and touched his hand.
Just a touch. Brief and careful. Her fingers brushed his knuckles, then settled there. Her hand was cold from gripping her tea mug. He could feel the calluses on her palm from years of kneading dough. Her hand trembled against his.
He didn’t pull away. Didn’t push. Just turned his hand over, palm up, and let her decide how much contact she wanted.
She left her fingers resting against his palm. It was the first time she’d reached for him since the fire.
“Okay,” she said. “We do this tomorrow. The night before the full moon.”
“Together,” Alessandro said.
“Together.”
Her hope kindled to match his own. Not certainty, they weren’t there yet, but the possibility of something better.
That night, Alessandro stood on the beach.
He could feel Marina asleep in Bea’s spare room. Her dreams were restless: fragments of fire and water, of being chased through corridors that shifted and changed. He could feel the way she kept reaching for her pelt in her sleep, that phantom-limb sensation of something vital that should have been there and wasn’t.
He wished he could give her that peace. But that wasn’t his to give. All he could offer was his presence: steady, patient, waiting for her to be ready.
Tomorrow they would face Malachar. Tomorrow they would try to break a curse that had lasted two centuries.
His phone buzzed. A text from Dante:Marina and Bea are still awake. Bea says Marina won’t stop pacing. Thought you should know.
Through the bond, Alessandro reached for her. Not pushing. Just letting her know he was there.
After a moment, he felt her reach back.
He typed:Tell Bea I’ll pay for whatever Marina breaks. And tell Marina?—
He deleted the text. Started over. Deleted it again. Pocketed the phone.
Through the bond, her reaching back steadied — not forgiveness, but a hand left where he could find it.
It was enough. For tonight, it was enough.
Chapter Twenty-One
MARINA
Marina stood at Bea’s window, watching storm clouds gather over Sweetwater Cove. In a few hours, they would face Malachar. In a few hours, the curse would break or they would fail.
The town below looked peaceful, deceptively so. Shops were closing early, their owners heading home with the careful casualness of people who knew something was about to happen. Word had spread, the way word always spread in Sweetwater Cove. The supernatural community was battening down its hatches.
She could feel Alessandro: steady, determined, radiating a calm that she knew was carefully constructed. He was afraid too. But he was channeling that fear into focus.
She needed to do the same.
Her grandmother’s recipe book was safe at Estelle’s, open to the Curse-Breaking Cake recipe, but Marina had memorized every word by now, could feel the magic humming in the ancient ink even at a distance. Her grandmother had known this moment would come. Had prepared for it decades ago, leaving breadcrumbs for a granddaughter she would never see grow up.
When the dragon comes, the margin note read,remember what matters.
Marina remembered.
“You ready?” Bea appeared beside her, purple hair pulled back, eyes sharp with chaotic energy. “Dante and I should leave soon. Get into position before the distraction starts.”
