Page 82 of The Witch They Crave

The room's empty. Lamp on, book open on the desk, the bed I'm not going to think about. And then, past the far door, the sound of water shutting off, and I realize a half-second too late exactly what I've walked into.

He comes out of the bathroom in a towel slung low at his hips and nothing else, and my brain simply stops.

Water still runs in dark tracks down his chest. His hair's pushed back wet and dripping, none of its usual severe order.

I have seen this man in a rolled-sleeve shirt and lost my whole train of thought. I have never seen this. Five hundred years has built him like something out of an old painting—broad through the shoulders, cut lean and hard down the stomach, and marked, everywhere, with the faded silver of scars centuries older than anyone I've ever met and detailed runic tattoos down each arm. There's a story in every one of them and I want to read all of them with my mouth and the thought arrives fully formed and mortifying before I can stop it.

"Sorry—" It comes out strangled. Heat floods my face. "The door was open, I didn't—you're—I'll come back."

I turn to see myself out.

I don't make it a step.

The air moves—that's the only warning, a displacement, the ghost of speed—and then he's between me and the door, close enough that the shower-heat still rolls off his skin. He didn't touch me. Didn't need to. He just put himself there, deciding in the space between one breath and the next that I'm not leaving.

I suck in a sharp breath and then regret it when our chests bump.

"You came to my door," he says. Level. Quiet. Water slides down his throat and I watch it go and hate myself for watching. "You don't get to knock and run, Calypso. Whatever brought you here—say it."

My pulse is somewhere north of reasonable. I make myself look at his face and not the rest of him, which is its own act of magic.

“Are–are you sure? I can wait for you to–”

“Cal,” he cuts me off.

I swallow thickly, squeezing my eyes shut to try and clear out my scrambled brain.

"I think something's wrong with me." The word comes out and I hear how it sounds, but I don't take it back. "I've been feeling things that aren't mine. Feelings that show up with no reason, no source, and when I trace them they lead—" I stop.

His brows knit as I point to him.

"They lead to you. And in training, when you put your magic against mine, there's almost no line anymore. I can't find where you stop and I start. So I asked Nellie and her mom had an idea of what it might be."

His expression doesn't change, but his thumb presses into the center of his opposite palm. The small gesture makes his bicep pop and my mouth waters.

"Tell me the word," he says.

I swallow and look away. "Tethered?"

Quiet. When I make myself look back, something's moved behind his eyes—not surprise. Recognition. He knew before I said it.

"She said when two magics link," I go on, because it's easier to talk than to stand here under that look, "the link stops caring which side a thing started on. What's owed and what's felt come through the same channel. That I'd feel things that weren't mine and not be able to tell the difference." My voice holds. Barely. "So. Is that what this is? Did you do something to me?"

He doesn't answer right away. He reaches past me—slow, deliberate, giving me every chance to flinch back—and pushes the door shut. The latch clicks. Whatever this is going to be, he's decided it isn't going to be overheard.

"Yes," he says. "That's exactly what it is."

The floor doesn't drop. I thought it might. There's just the cold, clean click of a thing I already knew locking home.

"The mirroring." His voice stays level, but he's using the level now, leaning on it. "Every time I've set my magic against yours to check your control or help you channel, it's accrued. Months of it. No one intends a tether—it isn't a technique, it's a consequence. But I've suspected for weeks. Before you did."

"Weeks." Something in me goes hot and sharp. "You've known for weeks that I might be walking around feeling things that aren't mine, and you didn't tell me?"

"No."

"Why."

And here's where I expect the apology. The careful phrasing, the Aamon who cracks a door open and then eases it shut before I can get through. I've been in this exact moment with him before. The moment where he decides to push me away instead of let me in.