Not because I forgot where I was.
Because, somehow, I didn’t need to.
That was the strangest part of all. The house still held everything Lily had implied and Pietro had confessed. The power was there. The danger too, in its own way. But so was the love, threaded through every exchange, every interruption, every glance that passed between the people around the table.
When dinner finally broke apart and the house began to settle into the rhythms of evening, Pietro found me in the hallway with one hand in his pocket and that look on his face that suggested he was trying very hard to remain dignified.
“Come on,” he said quietly. “I’ll show you your room.”
“Mine?” I asked, following him up the stairs.
“The room you are meant to sleep in if my sister is to retain her innocence and my mother is to avoid blaming me for corrupting the household.”
I laughed under my breath, and he guided me down a corridor before opening the door to a room that was elegant, warm, and just impersonal enough to suggest it was rarely used but always prepared.
“This,” he said, leaning one shoulder against the frame, “is where you’re supposed to sleep.”
I turned and looked at him. “Supposed?”
“For my sister’s sake, you understand. In this house, propriety still likes to make occasional appearances. We can only share a room when we’re married, I’ve been told, so?—”
He stopped there, just long enough for me to raise a brow.
“So?”
His eyes dropped briefly to my mouth before lifting again.
“There is no universe in which you actually sleep in here, Emily Hart.”
The warmth that ran through me had very little to do with the room.
“My real name isn’t Hart, you know,” I said softly. “It’s?—”
“It’s Hart.”
The certainty in his voice made me pause.
He stepped closer, not enough to crowd me, just enough that I could see the seriousness beneath the teasing.
“It’s Hart,” he said again. “That’s the name you chose. And I don’t care what some man or some history or some piece of paper said before. If Hart is the name that brought you here whole, then Hart is your name.”
For one second I couldn’t answer.
He reached up then and touched a curl near my temple, his knuckles brushing my skin so lightly it almost hurt.
“And if someday you want to give me another one,” he added, his voice dropping lower, “that will be your choice too.”
I stared at him.
“That,” I said eventually, because my throat had gone suspiciously tight, “was smooth.”
His mouth curved.
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about you.”
“I can tell.”
He glanced toward the bed, then back at me with a look that was suddenly much less innocent.
