Page 37 of Impawssible Magic

“Liar.” But she’s smiling, and it does something dangerous to my chest. “Try not to fall off.”

“I make no promises.”

She passes close enough that her scent wraps around me. Lavender and sage and something uniquely her. My hands itch to reach out, to pull her close, to bury my face in her hair and breathe her in.

I don’t move.

Upstairs, a door clicks shut. Then quiet.

Twelve feet. Might as well be twelve miles.

I dream of Dorothea.

This happens less often now—the sharp-edged grief has dulled to a persistent ache—but tonight she’s vivid. Dark hair and laughing eyes and the familiar bond that sang between us like a living thing.

We’re in the cabin, the one we shared before the accident. She’s making tea, humming off-key, and I’m watching her with the certainty of a man who knows exactly where he belongs.

“Five years.” She sets down the kettle without turning around. “That’s a long time to keep a seat empty at a table for one.”

“I don’t know how to do this without you.”

“You’re not doing it without me. You’re doing it instead of living, and those aren’t the same thing.” She turns, and her face is kind. Sad. Steady in the way that only ever showed up when she meant something completely. “I didn’t build a life with you so you could spend the rest of yours guarding my absence like it’s a duty. I want you happy, Aslan. Loud and stubborn and impossible again. I want you to let someone else set a place at that table.”

“What if I lose her too?”

“Then you’ll grieve her too, because that’s what loving people costs.” Her smile turns fond, a little exasperated—the exact face she used to make when I’d sulked over something small. “But you don’t get to skip the whole thing because you’re scared of the ending. That’s not honoring me. That’s just hiding.”

I wake to darkness and the sound of someone crying out.

Leire. Upstairs. Another nightmare.

My tiger has me halfway up the stairs before my human brain catches up. I stop on the landing, hand braced against the wall, breathing hard.

Her voice quiets. The crying stops. Silence settles back over the shop.

I should go back to the couch. Should maintain distance. Should remember all the reasons this is a terrible idea.

Instead, I sit on the top step. Close enough to hear if she needs me. Far enough to maintain the fiction that I’m not already lost.

The amethyst on her workbench gives a single pulse. Even in the dark, I feel it watching me.

Then the ward alarm trips.

Not screaming—a low, discordant hum threaded through the protective net around the shop. The kind of alarm that means something tested the perimeter without breaking through. I’m down the stairs and out the back door before the sound has fully processed, senses stretching into the dark.

Nothing. Mist. The smell of wet cobblestones and something sharp-edged and chemical that dissipates before I can place it. A suggestion of movement at the very edge of my range, gone when I turn.

They were here. They’re not anymore.

I do a full circuit of the building. If anything had gotten through—if she’d woken to something standing over her—I press the thought down hard and check every ward point. Everything holds—intact, but humming faintly with the strain of having been tested.

When I come back through the front door, Leire is at the top of the stairs.

She’s in her robe, arms wrapped around herself, a chunk of black tourmaline in one fist. Her hair is loose. Her eyes are very awake.

“Everything okay?” Her voice is quiet. Sleep-rough.

“Perimeter test. Nothing got through. The wards held.”