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“Three weeks after Wren.” His voice lowered, like his mind had gone somewhere far away. “I drove to a place in Arcata where nobody knew me and I told the guy exactly what I wanted, down to the line weight,” he said. “I was going to kill myself. I’d decided. I had a way and a day picked out .”

My hand flew to his heart before I’d thought about it, like some part of me needed to know it was still beating, close and real and reliable beneath my palm.

“Damian—”

“And then I didn’t. And I don’t have a good reason why. I just…” He blinked. “I woke up one morning and I wanted a way out that wasn’t that. I didn’t believe there was one, but I needed a symbol. I had no plan, no lineage, no idea any of this could ever end. Nothing. I just wanted to put a mark on my body that meant there might be a door I could unlock someday, an escape.”

I looked at the little key. At the birch grown through it, the way a sapling grows around a fence post in the woods.

“Why birch?”

“You plant birch after a fire. It grows where everything’s burned.”

“And the key?” I said.

“That was the lie I told myself so I’d get out of bed every day.” He looked down at my hand, still placed against the tattoo. “A key means there has to be a door somewhere. Because I had to believe that, and I made myself look at it every morning.” His hand covered mine, pressing my palm flat against it. “I’ve been carrying a key to a door I was trying to find for a year.”

I understood, all at once, what I was touching. My heart twisted. “Damian.”

“Yeah?”

“You found the door.”

His gaze met mine, and everything in his face broke open: the last brace, the last of what he’d been holding onto, gone.

“I know,” he said, his voice dry. “I’ve been looking at it every day since I met you, wondering if I was allowed to try the lock.”

I didn’t have any words left. I bent my head and put my mouth against the key—the one mark on him that didn’t mourn someone or brand him, the one thing he’d chosen when he had nothing left to choose with—and I felt him shudder under my lips like he’d thawed from a lifelong winter. His fingers slid into my hair. “This is the only thing I ever gave myself. I’ve never shown it to anyone.”

“And now?”

“Now you have all of me.” His thumb moved at my temple. “You’re the only person who can have the part of me they never got their hands on.”

My eyes stung.

“That’s all I want,” I said. “And it’s the only thing I care about.” I traced a line from the tattoo to the brand on his arm, then kissed the scarred skin. It made him go still, a breath leaving him unsteady.

“I hate them for doing this to you,” I said against his arm.

His hand came to my hair.

“I know,” he whispered.

But I loved him more than I hated them, so I forgot the coven when his hand slid from my hair to the side of my throat, his thumb brushing my pulse, and he spoke:

“I love you, Marlowe.”

“I love you, too.”

We stood holding each other, feeling everything at once. Then, when I kissed him again and his breath hitched, he pulled his own T-shirt over my head, the one I’d cried into for a day. His gaze traveled down my neck, my collarbone, the swell of my breasts. His fingers found the clasp of my bra, and the straps fell across my shoulders. The hunger in him hit me like touch.

He cupped me, his mouth on my shoulder, his other hand drawing my hip closer to his so I could feel what my body did to him.

When his tongue swirled across my nipple, my back arched, my hands gripping his hips. A ragged little noise left me. The heat, the tug of his lips, and the scrape of his stubble across my skin all moved through me in a rush so fierce I had to lean against the wall. He held my waist while he took his time learning how I yielded to his mouth.

I wrapped my legs around him. He gripped my thighs and carried me to the bed with his mouth everywhere it would reach.

We landed together, his body leaning over mine. He looked so good above me it made me forget to breathe, his hair tousled and hanging over his forehead, his eyes on mine. Damian had always made me weak with lust, but without his restraint, he was devastating.