The reaction went through him like heat striking metal. For an instant his hand tightened slightly at her waist before he forced it still. “They thought you were leverage,” hesaid.
Her gaze searched his face, more carefully now, lingering over his mouth before returning to his eyes. “What do you think I am?”
“Not leverage.” The words landed with clarity.
The answer came easily. Everything that followed didnot.
He didn’t speak again right away. The rest of the truth sat far too close to the surface now, dangerous in ways that had nothing to do with Donati and everything to do with what she had become to him in a terrifyingly short amount oftime.
When he had first seen her, she had been a problem of ethics and removal.Then a woman whose intelligence had been buried beneath obedience.Then something rarer. Someone who could have broken, should have broken, and instead kept choosing dignity in the narrow spaces left toher.
And now she stood under the moonlight asking him to name what she was to him. The honest answer was far too much to place in her hands tonight. So he gave her the part that might ease the hurt instead of deepening it. “They were wrong aboutyou,” he said. “And I won’t let their mistake define what happens to you next.”
Something in her expression shifted. Not healed. Not soothed. But seen.She lifted her hand and set it against his chest as if she needed confirmation that he was solid, real, still there. Her palm spread over his heart. The contact looked almost innocent. It was nothing of thesort.
Magnus covered her hand with his own, pressing it more firmly againsthim.
Her voice dropped to a murmur. “They could still try to take me back.”
“They can try.” His thumb traced across her knuckles. “That doesn’t mean they’ll succeed.”
“You sound very certain.”
“I am.”
The simple answer seemed to affect her more than promises would have. The rise of her chest brushed lightly against his tux. He became acutely aware of how close they were standing. Of the warmth gathered between their bodies despite the cool night. Of the fact that if he dipped his head even slightly, his mouth would be onhers.
She noticed it too.
He saw the awareness move through her. Her gaze flicked once to his mouth before returning to hiseyes.
“Magnus,”she said.
“Yes.”
“You should probably be angrier than this right now.”
His mouth almost curved. Almost. For a second he studied her face as if trying to understand how she had managed to turn the conversation back on herself. The impulse was so ingrained in her it came out automatically.
“I am angry,” hesaid.
“At Bianca?”
“Yes.”
“At Tommaso?”
“Yes.”
Her fingers tightened against his chest, curling slightly in the fabric of his tux jacket as if bracing for the answer. “At me?”
The question struck harder than the others. Not because it surprised him, but because he could see she genuinely expected it. Years of training sat behind those two simple words.
Magnus looked at her for a long moment, his hand still steady at the center of her back, catching the warmth of her through the silk of her dress and the faint tremor that ran through her when she waited for judgment.
He let the silence answer first.Then he said, very clearly, “No.”
Her eyes searched his as if she did not entirely trust what she hadheard.“Why not?”
