He froze the moment the word escaped him. His posture went rigid, eyes widening like he’d just realized he’d stepped on an emotional landmine.
“I—I meant—” He cleared his throat, looking anywhere but at me. “The shop.Yourshop. I was referring to the… cooperative nature of this project, not…” He gestured vaguely at the air, as if trying to scrub the word out of existence.
Not thebond. Not fate.Notanything terrifying.
Heat pooled in my chest—part ache and part amusement.
“Savla,” I whispered.
“No,” he said firmly. He raised a finger without looking at me, as if he knewexactlywhat I was going to say. And chances were that hedidknow. “Don’t.”
“But—” I started, and he cut me off.
“It was a linguistic accident.”
“It really wasn’t,” I teased, unable to help myself.
He finally shot me a sharp look—but the edges of it were soft, like he wasn’t actually mad. It was more like he was overwhelmed.
Before I could say anything else, Ribbon sat up, croaked triumphantly, and smacked his front foot straight into the table. The prototype potion rolled off the edge, bounced once, and—
“No, no, no—!”
The bottle hit the floor and a puff of forest-green mist exploded outward, glittering through the room like a miniature nebula. Ribbon froze mid-croak, eyes wide. Savla swore violently in two languages. I burst into laughter so hard I nearly folded over.
“It—it’s non-corrosive,” I wheezed. “It’s harmless!”
“It’severywhere,” Savla muttered, brushing shimmering particles off his hair. The specks clung to him stubbornly, making him glow faintly like someone had dipped him in enchanted sugar.
Ribbon looked delighted. He tried to lick the floor.
Savla gently pushed his head away. “Donoteat that.”
I knelt beside the mess, gathering the cracked bottle. “Goodthing it wasn’t the final batch or the shimmer might have been brighter.”
Savla crouched next to me, brushing a strand of hair from my cheek with a touch so light I wasn’t sure if he meant to. My breath caught anyway.
“I’ll help you remake it,” he said softly.
There was no panic in his voice now. No attempt to take it back. Just… sincerity.
“And the website?” I whispered.
He held my gaze, steady and warm—a kind of warmth he didn’t let anyone else see.
“We’ll finish it,” he said. “Together.”
My stomach flipped. We. This time he didn’t correct himself.
Ribbon wasnotsupposed to do it again.
But when the little menace nudged the second prototype potion with one curious, gelatinous wobble, the bottle spun like a drunken top and shattered across the table. A shimmering tidal wave of glitter fanned out, coating everything again—includingus.
I froze mid-sentence, my hands still on the tablet as Savla walked me through integrating payment processing. “Did… did he just—”
“Yes,” he said flatly, staring down at his now-sparkling forearms. “He did.”
Ribbon puffed up proudly and croaked.I slapped a hand over my mouth, trying not to laugh.
