“I love you, Violet Pepperdine,” I whisper. “Gods be damned, I love you so much it makes me ache to see your tears, even when they’re happy ones.” I kiss her cheeks, the salt coating my lips, tethering me to her. To this moment. To us.
Whatever the spell that bound us, please don’t let it be broken…
She threads her fingers into my hair, gazing up at me with those impossibly blue eyes, a smile curving her lips. “I fell in love with you too, Devlin Pierce,” she whispers. “Accidentally and completely. And I’m sorry, but I’mnotletting you go.”
I claim her mouth in another kiss, arching against her body, taking her deeper, harder, making her writhe for me, making her gasp and moan until she shatters around me like the brightest star, and I come inside her, claiming her as mine, marking her, wanting nothing more than to make our fairytale fantasy real.
When I finally draw back and break the kiss, I meet her hooded gaze and she smiles again, and something between us shifts, the air in the room expanding, then contracting, the sugar-sweet scent of her magic saturating every molecule.
Then, all at once, I feel it. A loosening in my chest, like the shedding of a too-tight jacket. The cutting of a rope.
The breaking—I realize with a start—of a witch’s binding spell.
“Devlin?” she whispers beneath me, and I watch the same realization sweep over her face, her blue eyes widening.
“The spell,” I whisper. Amazed, awestricken. Terrified. “It’s… it’s broken.”
My portal magic—dormant since my fated arrival—rushes back through my veins, a long-dead battery fully recharged. And thanks to the deal I made with Remington, the last soul in the collection plate, the pathway to Hell is free and clear.
Centuries. Millennia. I’ve been waiting for this moment for longer than I remember living my old life. Ruling upon that throne. Cowering before a father who never saw me as anything but a failure.
I did it. Bested him. Broke the spell trapping me in Wayward Bay, too.
Yet somehow the victory rings hollow. Like winning the championship tournament only to realize the gleaming golden trophies you once admired from the other side of the glass are no more than plastic trinkets.
“So I’mnotdreaming about the grant.” Violet wriggles out from under me and sits up in bed. “We really did it, Devlin. We unlocked my heart’s desire and saved the café, and now the spell is broken.”
She smiles, her eyes full of conflicting emotions. Wondering, undoubtedly, what this means for us now that we’re no longer magically bound.
“We did it,” I confirm, trying to keep my own emotions neutral. My own secrets intact.
The space between her brows creases, and she reaches for her glasses on the nightstand, pushing them onto her face. The haze of our lust is fading, the tide of pleasure and love finally receding.
Her logical mind clicks back into gear.
“I still don’t understand what happened,” she says, and I know what she’s thinking about, know where those thoughts will lead her, know that the tender, all-consuming moment between us is already unraveling.
I’m losing her. FuckingHell, I’m losing her, and all I can do is sit here in pained silence and wait for her to come to the natural conclusion.
“With the grant, I mean. What changed?” Violet pulls the sheet up, tucks it under her arms, covering herself. “They turned me down, then suddenly I’m in the winner’s circle? They said it was some kind of glitch, but come on. Every person on that committee knows me. Knows everyone who applied. This was no glitch.”
“Does it matter?” I sit up beside her and kiss her shoulder. “You’ve earned the grant, that’s the main thing.”
“Have I, though?” She peers at me, her eyes narrowing. Filling with questions. Confusion. A flicker of hurt.
An unfamiliar heat simmers in my chest, spreading outward like living fire.
It takes me a beat to realize what it is, for it’s been far too long since I’ve felt it.
Guilt.
A hot, sticky ache that quickly gives way to anger. Why should I feel guilty for helping her? That’s why I was summoned here, after all. Sheneededme. Not her sisters, not her own magic, not the gods or goddesses or even the worst of Hell’s demons.
For this task, only the Devil himself would do.
Onlyme.
“Devlin?” she asks, her voice cracking.
