Elia sucked in a breath and tried to pull away. Magnus didn’t let her. He held their joined hands between them until the heat subsided and the trembling in her fingers eased.Her eyes were wide when he finally releasedher.
“That shouldn’t be possible,” shesaid.
“It’s not a question of should.”
She pushed up against the pillows, drawing the sheet across her chest, not to hide from him, but to brace herself against what she didn’t know. Her damp hair clung to one shoulder. The bruise he’d noticed earlier was beginning to surface faintlywhere his arm had shielded her on the balcony. The sight hardened something already hard withinhim.
She looked at her palm again, turning it slightly as if the change in angle might make the mark behave differently. It didn’t. The shield remained dark and clear beneath her skin. “I’ve never heard of this.”
Magnus wasn’t surprised. The Donatis would never have spoken about Dante Brands in front of someone they intended to sell. “No reason you would have,” hesaid.
Her gaze lifted again, sharp and searching now. “And this only happens to... Dantes?”
“Yes,” he said.
The answer sat betweenthem.
Elia’s throat moved. “But I’m not a Dante. And you’re a Severin.”
“No, you’re not a Dante. But my mother was.”Magnus held her gaze. “A Dante Brand appears when a Dante meets the person meant for them. Not attraction. Not convenience. Something older than that. Rarer. Amating bond.” He turned his palm slightly so she could see the shield more clearly. “When the bond connects two people, the Brand forms on both of them. It doesn’t ask permission and it doesn’t disappear.”
Elia stared at him, the explanation clearly colliding with everything she thought she understood about the world. “A mating bond,” she repeated. Her gaze dropped to the mark again, then lifted back to his, searching his face for any signthat he was exaggerating. “You’re telling me this appeared because we’re… meant for each other?”
“Yes, though that,” he said, “is no longer the most urgent question.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “It’s fairly urgent to me.”
“Granted.” He sat up fully then, the sheet falling to his waist, the mark dark in the center of his palm. “But there are things that matter more in the next ten minutes.”
Elia followed the shift in him with that sharp, watchful intelligence she’d kept hidden behind obedience and stillness for too long. He could see the exact instant she understood the room had changed. The intimacy hadn’t disappeared, but it had been joined by something colder. More dangerous.
She looked at him, then at the mark again. “The Donatis.”
“Yes.” The word landed hard.
Her fingers curled over the sheet. “They’ll know what it means?”
“Eventually.”
She went very still. “And if they do?”
Magnus leaned toward her and took her marked hand one more time, not to inspect it now, but to hold her attention exactly where he wanted it.“If they do,” he replied, “they’ll understand what I already do.”
Her pulse beat hard under his thumb. “Which is?”
“That you’re not going backto them. Ever.”
The words hit andheld.
Elia searched his face as if looking for exaggeration, for temper, for some possessive impulse he would regret once the morning settled. He gave her none of that. Only certainty.
His phone began toring.
Neither of them moved at first.
Magnus glanced toward the nightstand, then back at her. He didn’t need to see the screen to know who it would be. Alaric, most likely. Or Leif. The machinery of the outside world starting up again, unaware that the board had just shifted beneath all of them. Again.
Elia’s voice grew softer when she spoke. “You said it won’t hurt me.”
