“What, food?”
“No.” His gaze drops to my mouth. “You.”
Just one word. One ridiculously effective word. Andit slices through my defenses like a hot knife through butter.
His hands close over mine, and before I can yank them back, he raises them and presses the lightest kiss to my knuckles. The gesture is maddeningly smooth—Alder at his most infuriating. And yet, there’s a softness in it too. Something familiar and foreign all at once. It makes me want to slap him and maybe straddle him, which is deeply unhelpful.
“You didn’t get enough to eat in the room?” I ask, more clipped than I mean to be, trying to shore up the cracks he always seems to find.
I’m not falling for this again. I’m not falling for him. No matter how pretty the packaging or how well he plays the role of hero, I’m not the girl who gets fooled over and over…and over and over again by the same asshole.
His grin turns wicked, the kind that used to spell trouble for my clothes. “I always need a full meal before I enjoy dessert.”
My knees go wobbly. I want to throw a spoon at his face.
Instead, I scoff. “Disgusting.”
He shrugs like he’s proud of it. “Delicious.”
And just like that, I’m twenty-one again, hiding a blush and pretending his teasing doesn’t make me feel like I’m standing at the edge of something dangerously enjoyable. I hate how easily he does this. I hate how much I don’t hate it.
“You look…” he starts, and there’s a shift in his tone that pulls all the air from the room. “Lovely.” His gaze lingers. “Good enough to eat.”
“Don’t think you can distract me with sexy flattery.”
He leans in, thumb brushing the corner of my mouth. When he pulls it away, it glistens with a smear of honey. Without breaking eye contact, he lifts it to his lips and licks it clean with the kind of deliberate, slow drag that belongs in a wet dream.
“Sweet,” he murmurs. “Just like I thought.”
My brain short-circuits. Images of last night crash through me—his hands, his kiss, the impossible softness in it and the promise I thought I felt tucked into its warmth. That stupid heat blooms again, curling low in my stomach, desperately wanting to set up permanent residence.
His scent hits me all at once, a heady mix of woodsmoke and dark chocolate. Before I can stop it, I let out a sigh. A real sigh. Like a swoony Victorian heroine fainting over a discarded cravat. I want to fight him. Or maybe kiss him until he forgets whatever he’s hiding from me. Or maybe I want him to kiss me until I forget too.
I open my mouth to say something—maybe to challenge him, maybe to lie and tell him that he’s gross and I feel nothing—but Bernice saves me from myself.
“If you two are quite finished,” she says, voice flat as a cast-iron skillet, “there’s a task that needs doing.” She thrusts a wicker basket between us. “Couldn’t save the eggs, and a new batch won’t gather themselves.”
I grab it, grateful for the excuse. For the distance. For the chance to get away from the magnetic pull of this man who is both my ruin and reason.
The lights in the kitchen still burn too bright, and the steam-powered contraptions still hiss and sputter, but Bernice and Sylvie have managed to settle the worst ofit by the time Alder and I step into the misty courtyard.
The cool air kisses my skin and is tinged with the scent of damp stone mingled with the sweetness of nearby blooming flowers.
Without hesitating, Alder sets off down the narrow stone path, basket swinging easily from one hand. I fall into step beside him, grateful to not have to think about where we’re going.
As we round the corner, the roar of water crescendos, and one of the great waterfalls cascading down the castle’s exterior comes into view. Its torrents crash against jagged rocks far below, shattering into glittering spray that hangs in the air like fairy dust.
I glance at him as we walk. “How did you learn your way around this place so quickly?”
He shrugs, his grin softening into something almost wistful. “Some places unfold themselves to you,” he says. “People too. Those you’re meant to know… You find them, and suddenly, the map appears.”
My breath catches. For a moment, everything slows. The spray, the sunlight, the low thrum of the castle behind us. All of it fades beneath the weight of his gaze.
This doesn’t feel like the Alder I know.
This feels like someone seeing me—not as an accessory to his success, not as some carefully curated image of stability and charm, but as I am. The woman who walked away. The woman who had nothing left but her pride and a few bruised pieces of her heart she couldn’t bear to hand over again. The woman who’s scared, if she’s being honest. Scared of what happens if she keeps standing still. Scared of what happens if she moves forward.
I swallow and quickly look away, tugging at the scoopneck on my borrowed dress like it’s suddenly suffocating. “Well,” I say, too brightly, “lucky you. A magickal map and all the answers fall into your lap. Meanwhile, the rest of us are hoping we don’t get flattened by a rogue mechanical whisk or eaten by a weird machine.”
