Mae shook her head. “Fine… but you still used me to hurt Sondre.”
“He’s only hurt because he cares about—”
“Ha! I don’t think so. He hurt because I was his possession and you bedded me. Nothing emotional about it.” Mae’s voice sounded wobbly, and Prospero felt a flicker of guilt. “You’re both awful people, you know?”
“I do.” Prospero nodded. “Now, I’m going to alter this woman’s memory, so could we save any more of these accusations?”
“Bitch.” Mae walked away, hips swinging and footsteps clicking in a way that would give Cassandra a run for her money.
She paused at the door and gave Prospero a chilling smile. Then she dropped a stone in a metal bowl. Atingas the stone connected with the metal echoed like a bullet. Then the spell ricocheted around the room, zinging Prospero, who physically lunged over Ellie to protect her from whatever it was that Mae tossed in her spell bowl.
“Prospero?” Ellie looked up at her, eyes wide and lashes thick like she’d added makeup to them. “Why are you on top of me? Why am I here?”
For a flicker of a moment, common sense seemed like it would prevail, but when Prospero opened her mouth, the truth spilled out instead: “I wasn’t sure what spell the doctor just dropped so I… I wanted to protect you.”
The stone was a truth encourager.They were used by the doctor often when the patient was stubborn. It should only last a few moments, so really all Prospero had to do was not talk. Surely, that could work!
“Are we alone?”
“Yes.”
“Can we escape?” Ellie whispered.
Prospero shook her head, her teeth clamping her lips shut so no incriminating words leaked out. She knew she needed to erase the memory of her time over in the Barbarian Lands and Ellie’s visit to her home—but she didn’t want to.
“Did my snake help?” Ellie’s hands slid around Prospero’s waist, and one hands trailed up her spine. She teased, “Can I get a reward?”
If not for the fact this had to end, Prospero would be smiling.This. This was what she’d wanted from the first moment she’d seen Ellie.
Unable to continue resisting the spell now that Ellie had asked for the truth, too, Prospero angled her neck, so she was whispering into Ellie’s ear. “I have to leave you here. You have tonotknow me. There are rules. I broke a lot of them to find you.”
“I won’t tell. No one here, and then no one at home when I—”
Her words ended as Prospero caught Ellie’s mouth in a kiss. If they kissed, Prospero couldn’t talk, and if they didn’t kiss right now, they mightnot ever do so again. The chances of Ellie genuinely liking her after today were slim.
For a sliver of a second, Prospero thought Ellie would resist, but then the hand Ellie had been resting on Prospero’s spine slid upward. In the next moment, Ellie was cradling the back of Prospero’s head as she took control of their kiss.
What was to be a simple goodbye kiss flared into something else, and Prospero had neither the reserve nor the kindness to stop it. She felt Ellie try to unbutton her vest, and instead of stopping her, she leaned back to give her better access.
“Yes,” she said, pulling back from the kiss and making her consent completely verbal in case her bodily clues weren’t clear enough.
Ellie grinned, holding Prospero’s gaze as she popped the first button.
By the second button, Prospero leaned back down and pressed her lips to Ellie’s mouth again. This was a terrible idea, letting Ellie lead their kiss into something more—something that would leave them both with bee-stung lips and flushed faces. But Ellie’s hand was on Prospero’s hip again, and she shifted Prospero to the side so Prospero’s leg was between Ellie’s now-parted thighs.
No one would dare come in here. It’s fine.
When Ellie moaned and her hand tightened on Prospero’s hip, logic came screaming back to the forefront of her mind. For all that Prospero wanted this, wanted Ellie, she had to erase Ellie’s mind, and erasing it after… however far they were about to go in this intimacy felt wrong.
Prospero pulled away and all but tumbled to the floor in her haste. “Stop.”
“I already did.” Ellie sat up on the cot, sliding backward and rolling to her side. “Did I misunderstand? I thought—”
“You thought the right thing,” Prospero assured her, reaching up and squeezing her hand.
“Good.” Ellie brushed back her hair and stared at Prospero with the same unflinching gaze she’d had when she’d told her not to drink tea around the books.
Prospero straightened her sleeves, rebuttoned the two vest buttons that had been undone. “You must understand what is at stake here. Your magic was awakened, but youdrained yourselfcreating that serpent, Miss Brandeau. You’re volatile, and if you tried to leave the castle unsupervised, you’d be a danger to yourself and any non-witches.”
