"That sounds like him."
"He offered to saddle my horse himself this morning."
"Very subtle."
"Lissy."
He crosses the shop and stops an arm's length away. I have to tip my head back to meet his eyes, and he makes no attempt at all to close the space between us. For once he's leaving that to me.
"Your letter," he says. "I've read it every day."
My throat tightens.
"The curse is real. You don't care." His voice comes out rough. "Tell me here."
So I do.
"The curse is real."
His eyes don't move off mine.
"Noemi found the working inside the book. She could feel it from across Grammy's kitchen. She says counter-craft can'tbreak it, because it feeds on belief, and the Sunfell women have been feeding it for generations."
I swallow.
“Am I afraid of it? Yes,” I admit softly. “I’m not stupid.”
"Lissy—"
"No. Let me finish."
He closes his mouth.
"I spent thirty-two years listening to that story. Do you know how many things I didn't let myself want because of it? How many times I stood at the edge of somebody else's wedding and told myself that was the safer place to stand?"
My hands are shaking hard enough to make the paper on the counter crackle. I stop trying to hide it and let them.
"The curse is real, Torgan. It doesn't get to make another decision for me."
His breath leaves him.
"I love you." There. Plain enough. "I don'tthinkI love you. I don'talmostlove you. I love you, and I'm still angry with you, and both of those are true at the same time."
"I know."
"Do you?"
"Yes."
The answer comes immediately, with no defense and nothing clever attached to it.
Good.
"I choose you," I say. "Not because I think the book can't hurt us. Not because Noemi found a way around it. I choose you because I'm done setting down everything I want before somebody can take it away from me."
My voice cracks. I don't care.
"And if the curse wants my love, it can starve."
