“Very efficient,” Rudgar added, with a mischievous smirk.“Combine the fumes and the varnish smell. Maybe they’ll cancel each other out.”
“Or explode,” someone else called. The group erupted into laughter.
I pressed my hands to my flaming cheeks. “Can we not discuss my hypothetical house? Or my hypothetical—”
Mate.
The word burned in my throat. I swallowed it back with a nervous laugh. “—future paint fumes?”
The teasing only intensified. Dristan clapped Savla on the back with a smack that would’ve killed a human.
“We’ll put you two near the lake. There’s a great view for art and good herbs for Hanna. It’s the perfect setup.”
Savla stiffened even more, which I previously thought was physically impossible. His jaw flexed and his ears flushed darker. His eyes flicked toward me—quick, pained and longing—before he jerked them away like the air between us was a live wire.
My heart squeezed.Oh.There it was again. His fear of the bond.
He wasn’t embarrassed by the teasing—he was scared of what it meant. Scared of wanting it and of wantingme.
I forced a grin, trying to keep things light. “Well, if Savla gets a rooftop workshop, I demand a storage room just for herbs. Maybe two.”
“Three,” Zara called. “She’ll need three. Minimum.”
“Four,” Krusk called, pointing at Ribbon as he croaked from somewhere behind us. He’d apparently followed the crowd, enormous, squishy and uninvited.
Everyone roared with laughter.Even Savla huffed out something that might’ve been a laugh if you squinted at it sideways. I saw it anyway—the brief warmth of it, the hint of softness underneath all that armor.
His gaze slid back to me, slow and reluctant and my breath hitched in my chest. Because for one heartbeat, the bond flared—bright and sure—and he felt it too. I saw it in the way his chest rose sharply, like it hurt him. Like wanting mehurt.
The group kept laughing, joking, already suggesting paint colors and herb beds and where Ribbon’s inevitable mud pit should go. But Savla’s voice cut through the noise, low and tight,
“It’s only talk.”
My smile faltered just a fraction and I prayed that no one noticed.
He’s not rejecting you, I told myself, struggling to stop the hurt that was flaring inside of me.He’s bracing. Protecting himself from something he thinks will destroy him.He confided in you that it scares him. You’re not going to pry. You’re going to wait for him to realize that you’ll never hurt him. That you’ll never leave. Once he realizes that, everything will work out.
I forced a bright, bright grin. “Right. Only talk,” I laughed,swallowing the ache. “And I suppose someone needs to keep Ribbon from eating our front door anyway.”
Ribbon croaked proudly. Savla’s lips twitched again—a ghost of a smile that unraveled me completely.
Everyone else kept teasing, planning and laughing around us, but all I could feel was the electric space between us—warm and trembling with something neither of us was ready to name.
All of it was only talk. Only teasing. Only a future I wasn’t supposed to want.
And yet… the pull thrummed steadily in my chest.
Chapter 18
Hanna
Iheld the little glass bottle up to the light, and my breath caught.
Oh.
Even now, hours after I’d finished brewing it, the liquid glowed softly—a deep, shimmering green that rippled like starlight over water. Savla’s pigments had blended into my magick so seamlessly that I couldn’t tell where his art ended and my spell began.
It didn’t look like a potion anymore. It looked like hope in a bottle. Like the feeling of coming home after being lost for so long you’d forgotten what home even meant.
