“Good night,” she said softly.
“Good night,” I said quickly, louder than necessary, thinking volume could erase my thoughts along with my guilt for having them. I cleared my throat. “We’re visiting someone tomorrow.”
Her voice floated down, suspicious. “Who?”
“An old friend.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to be rid of this spell.”
Another beat of silence.
Then came the scoff. “It is only two weeks.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Two weeks longer than I want to be camped out on floorboards while you commandeer my bed.”
“Perhaps you should get a larger bed,” she muttered.
A grin stretched across my face. “Why? So we can share one?”
That did it.
The mattress creaked as she shifted sharply. Her glare couldhave frozen the Merise sea. “I meant adifferentbed,” Quinn snapped.
“Oh, I see,” I said, feigning understanding. “Differentbed. Not shared.”
She went quiet, as if she wasn’t sure if answering would help or hurt. I glanced up at her.
“You know,” I added after a breath, “you’ve got a very dramatic reaction to hypothetical bedding arrangements.”
She didn’t answer. Not with words. But her breath snagged as she fumbled with her own silence.
And Saints, it thrilled me. Not because she was flustered, but because she wasn’t unaffected.
I didn’t say anything further as I lay down. In that low, suspended quiet, I let myself wonder what it might be like to sleep next to her.
Not because of a strange spell, but because I thought I might want to.
She settled once more, a rustle of fabric against skin. Two nights in the same room shouldn’t be enough to learn the pattern of another person’s breathing, or the way the mattress dips when they turn. But I was already starting to recognize her shape in the dark.
Two weeks. Fourteen days. Then she would be gone, pulled back into that unreachable sleep, and I’d be standing here alone, staring at a bed that suddenly felt too big and too cold.
The thread of magic between us gave one more unprovoked pulse, as if it agreed.
I closed my eyes. Told myself to sleep.
But my pulse refused to slow. And her breathing didn’t fade. And the space between us felt narrower with every passing minute.
Realization settled over me as sleep blurred the edges of mythoughts. This was the first time, in longer than I could say, that I hadn’t felt alone.
I wasn’t ready for the day she’d leave.
ELEVEN DAYS REMAINING
6
QUINN
