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“I mean you can prepare cacao as a recipe, or you can prepare it as a ritual. There are more than just ingredients in it.”

“What, you mean—”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”

I eyed the mug of tea in my hand. “And this?”

“Peppermint, wormwood, clove, juniper, yarrow, and intent, just like the cacao. The good kind.”

“You realize how absurd this sounds?”

“You left normal behind when you joined Aurora around that fire,” he said. “The purge will start in two hours, and you’re going to feel rough. Really rough. But it’ll be over by the morning.”

“That’s not particularly comforting,” I said.

I didn’t drink it yet. We sat down at the table. “And the salt and nails?”

“Salt confuses a trail. Iron pins a boundary. It doesn’t stop anything with a body. It stops the kind of visitor without one.”

“Wait, what?”

I looked at those jars again, like they were omens for something I wouldn’t survive unscathed.

“There are things I need to explain to you. Things you’re not going to want to hear. Things you won’t want to believe. But you need to hear them.”

“I’ve known you for exactly two days,” I said, but it didn’t sound right when it left my mouth. Only one small part of my brain thought it didn’t know him. The rest of me had decided I did.

“Marlowe, there’s no easy way to tell you this, and I don’t have time to be gentle about it. You’re in danger, and I’m in danger just by telling you.”

I stared at the incredibly hot man saying terrible things to me from across a cramped little table. My pulse quickened for the right reason, then the wrong one, and I couldn’t tell the difference.

“Start with Bram,” I said, not because it was the most sensible question, but because it was the one that haunted me the most.

“It was Kai. Aurora told him to slit his throat. The ceremony… it wasn’t manifestation, it was a binding. You were prepared like a bride.”

When his words landed, I was too confused to feel sick. And then I wasn’t. The heady, earthy scent of the tea and the fertile earth carried on the wind outside was suddenly repulsive, like rotting flowers, rust and saltwater decay.

The dress, the floral crown, they were the first small pieces of the puzzle, and they made me fold very small inside. I let him continue, still holding the mug.

“The cacao opened you, the sigil signed you, the fire took your wish, the mark—Bram’s blood—sealed the contract. You were given to something.”

I had no idea what to say to that. There were parts of me that refused every word he said, parts that were furious, parts that didn’t understand anything but his presence in that chair. All I knew was that I felt violated.

“You’re trying to tell me that some new-age witches married me to a demon? And the poor goat had to die for it? Who are you, Damian, really?” I looked down at the tea. “Why should I believe any of this?”

His gaze dropped. “I was born into the coven.”

Coven. I asked myself if he’d really said it aloud. For the first time, I wondered if I should run out of the door.

“Coven?” I said, barely audible.

“Yes.”

“And by coven, I’m guessing you don’t mean women using spell kits from Etsy?”

“Unfortunately not.”

“Halcyon,” I said.