Hazel laughed—a breath of sound against his lips. "Even the grimoire approves."
Nate pulled back enough to glance at the glowing doorframe. The corner of his mouth lifted.
"Good. I'd hate to have relationship problems with a book."
She kissed him again. Shorter this time. Sweeter. A period at the end of a sentence they'd been writing since the night the Codex woke.
Above them, the gargoyles kept watch. The stars wheeled on. And the magic that had been chaos for weeks settled into its groove like a key turning in a lock it was always meant to open.
10
COMMUNITY REACTIONS AND RELATIONSHIP BLISS
Hazel woke to sunlight striping the bedroom ceiling and the smell of coffee she hadn't made.
She lay still for three full seconds, cataloging the evidence. Coffee. Her kitchen. Not her doing. The protective wards hadn't triggered, which meant they recognized whoever was down there as?—
Nate.
She pressed her face into the pillow and grinned like an idiot.
The memory of last night lived in her lips, in the phantom warmth of his hands on her face, in the low chord of magic that still hummed beneath her ribs. She touched her mouth. Smiled harder. Rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling with the particular vacancy of a woman whose brain had been replaced by golden light and the taste of someone else's breath.
Raven sat on the nightstand, watching her with the unblinking intensity of a jeweler inspecting a suspect diamond.
"You're glowing."
Hazel held up her hand. Faint amber light pulsed beneath her skin, warm as a candleflame. "Residual magical harmonization. Perfectly normal after?—"
"I meant your face. You look like someone replaced your brain with buttercream frosting."
Hazel threw off the covers. "He brought coffee."
"He arrived at six forty-seven with a paper bag from Fabio's bakery and what appeared to be two different varieties of caffeinated beverages. I permitted entry because the wards accepted him and because he brought cream for me." Raven's tail flicked. "The cream does not constitute a bribe."
"Of course not."
"I remain professionally neutral regarding your romantic entanglements."
"Naturally." Hazel pulled on her favorite sage cardigan over her sleep shirt, dragged her fingers through the wreckage of her hair, and caught her reflection in the bedroom mirror. Flushed cheeks. Bright eyes. The kind of face that belonged on the cover of one of the romance novels that had exploded in the archives.
She didn't even bother with her glasses.
The apartment's main room was filled with morning light that turned the crystal clusters on the windowsills into small fires. Nate stood at her kitchen counter, sleeves rolled to his forearms, pouring coffee into her grandmother's blue stoneware mugs with the focus he normally reserved for analyzing magical crime scenes. The paper bag from Fabio's bakery sat torn open, revealing scones studded with what appeared to be actual gemstone-colored berries.
He looked up when she padded in on bare feet.
Something shifted in his expression—a softening around the eyes, a loosening of the jaw, the careful investigator letting himself be caught off guard by something he hadn't planned for.
"I've never woken up this happy before."
Four feet of kitchen separated them. Hazel crossed it.
"Get used to it."
She kissed him. Morning breath and coffee steam and his hand finding the curve of her waist like it had been practicing the geometry of her body in his sleep. The magic between them didn't surge or spark. It settled. A low golden glow that warmed the copper pots and made the herb jars on the open shelves rattle with contentment.
His free hand came up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. His fingers lingered.
