Nate stepped closer, and his voice dropped to something raw and wrecked. "Then you're being selfish. People could die because of us. This whole town—everyone we care about?—"
"People could die because we're weak and divided too!" Her voice cracked on the last word. The fountain strobed between red and that terrible indigo, casting their shadows in competing directions across the square.
Silence. The kind that has weight and teeth.
Nate's mouth opened, then closed. His hand came up—reaching for her or pushing her away, she couldn't tell, and maybe he couldn't either—then dropped to his side.
He walked away. Past the fountain, past Cricket's frozen stare, past the memorial garden where bronze plaques honored people who'd been braver than both of them.
Hazel stood in the gazebo alone. The fountain settled to black.
15
RECONCILIATION AND NEW STRATEGY
She didn't sleep. Didn't try. The apartment above the library felt like a museum exhibit of someone else's happiness—Nate's coffee mug still on the counter, his reading glasses folded on the nightstand, his jacket draped over the chair where he'd tossed it three nights ago when they'd stumbled in from the portal realm, drunk on survival and each other.
Raven watched from the windowsill without comment. That silence hurt worse than any sarcastic observation.
Around two in the morning, the Codex pulsed once from its alcove. A single, dim heartbeat of golden light that illuminated the warded corner and faded. Hazel pressed her palm against the wall and felt nothing. No warmth. No resonance. Just plaster and old wood.
She sat in her reading chair and stared at the dark until the dark stared back.
Dawn came gray and uncommitted, the kind of morning that refused to pick a mood. Hazel pulled on yesterday's cardigan—the oatmeal one with the coffee stain on the cuff—and walked downstairs through the library's back entrance. The stacks smelled like cedar and old paper and the faintest trace of Nate'ssandalwood soap, because the universe had a vicious sense of humor.
She pushed through the front doors and sat on the stone steps.
The library steps. Where the grimoire had glowed soft approval while he kissed her under stars that arranged themselves into patterns she'd never seen in any astronomical text. Where she'd thought, with absolute certainty, that she'd finally found the person who made her magic feel like music instead of obligation.
The stone was cold through her jeans. She didn't care.
Fifteen minutes passed. Twenty. A robin landed on the iron railing, assessed her misery, and departed for better company.
Then footsteps. Measured, deliberate, the gait of a man who'd been pacing all night and finally picked a direction. She recognized his stride before she saw his boots.
Nate stopped at the bottom of the steps. He looked like he'd slept in his clothes—shirt wrinkled, collar askew, dark circles carved beneath those green eyes. His hair stuck up on one side where he'd run his hands through it until it surrendered.
They stared at each other across five stone steps and an ocean of unsaid things.
"I was wrong." He said it like setting down something heavy. "I was so afraid of losing you that I almost threw you away."
Her throat tightened. The pencil she'd unconsciously tucked behind her ear slid free and clattered down the steps between them, rolling to a stop against his boot. Neither reached for it.
"I was wrong too." Her voice came out smaller than she wanted. She cleared her throat. "I was so afraid of losing you that I tried to force you to stay. Called you a coward in front of half the town." She pressed her glasses up her nose. "We're both idiots."
Something shifted in his face. The corner of his mouth—the left one, the one that always gave first—twitched.
"The smartest idiots in town?"
"Definitely."
He climbed the first step. Second. Third. Sat down beside her on the cold stone, close enough that their shoulders touched. Warmth bloomed at the point of contact—not magical, not yet, just the simple animal comfort of proximity to the person you loved.
"I keep thinking about what Baba Yaga said." He picked up her fallen pencil, turned it between his fingers. "Love makes you strong and vulnerable. Both necessary."
"I keep thinking about how I threw a public tantrum in the town square and made the fountain turn black."
His laugh was short and rough and real. "Cricket's going to charge us for emotional water damage."
