Page 56 of The Witch They Crave

He pauses.

"Hex, his reach goes way deeper than it should. On paper this house lost everything—name dragged down, allies gone, the kind of fall you don't climb back from. But somebody's spent years quietly rebuilding those connections. Calling in favors nobody remembers owing. That's not a broke lord clinging to a title." His jaw tightens. "He’s building toward something."

Something goes quiet in me. I hadn’t realized that his family had fallen out of favor. From the extravagance of the Revel, you wouldn’t know.

"Toward what?"

"Don't know yet." His voice drops. "But it runs through his family's past. There's a hole in the old records—something sealed, buried under a lot of money, a long time ago. Whatever he wants with you ties back to it. I just can't see the shape yet." He shakes his head. "It's personal, Hex. The house, the rumors, all of it. That's not how you handle an incident. That's how you handle something that's yours."

"He left an invitation on my pillow," I say. "Dinner. Just the two of us."

Kage goes very still. "When?"

"Tomorrow night."

Whatever careful thing was in his face is gone. "You're not going."

"I'm going." I say it plainly, because it's true. "He owns me on paper. Saying no just makes him curious about why—and I'd rather he not get more curious about me. Besides. I want to know what his deal is. He drags me to his house, sits me in the fancy rows, tells the whole school I'm his. Nobody does all that for a witch they just want to keep leashed. If he wants me across a dinner table, then I play nice, I let him talk, and maybe I figure out what he actually wants from me."

"He gets you alone, in his element, away from witnesses—" A muscle jumps in his jaw. "That's not a dinner, Hex. That's him testing how much he can get away with. Finding out what you'll do when there's no one watching."

"Then let him test." I hold his eyes. "I've survived worse men than Leopold Vassard being curious about what I'll do."

"Or he does something at his own table he'd never do anywhere else." But the fight's already going out of it, because he knows I'm right and he hates that I'm right. He drags a hand down his face. "Don't provoke him. Don't dig where he can see you dig. Let him talk and you listen."

"I'm good at listening."

"I know." Quieter. "That's what worries me."

Neither of us moves. The space between us has gone small and charged, and through the slight bond, something warm and specific and not particularly subtle.

This close, with more than two seconds to look, I start cataloguing him without meaning to. The bruise along his jaw, worse than it looked across the field. A silver scar above his collar I've never noticed before, shaped almost like a hand. The way the anger's gone out of him and left something tired underneath. A week chasing shadows through the city for me and I can see he’s taking it seriously.

I reach up and touch the bruise. Just my fingertips.

His eyes close. One second. Open. "Cal."

"I'm aware."

"Of what, specifically?"

"What I'm doing."

The smirk goes somewhere else. What's underneath is less guarded than I expected and hungrier, and neither surprises me as much as the fact that I'm not moving.

"You're sure," he says. Not quite a question. The pause where someone gives you the real chance to change your mind.

I bite the inside of my cheek, warmth spreading through me.

"Since the cellar," I say. "I just needed a minute alone with you to do something about it."

He pulls me in by the back of my neck like I might reconsider and kisses me. Hard, immediate, no easing into it—and I make a sound against his mouth that eggs him on. His other hand finds my waist, stops at my hem—not crossing it. Just there. A question he already knows the answer to.

The bond hums louder than I've felt it. I get both sides at once—my want, then his, same chord in a lower key.

I take his face in my hands. The scar under my thumb. He makes a sound I feel in my sternum.

"Hi," he says against my mouth.