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“I also saw the most beautiful woman I’d ever met, but I was trying not to make the conversation weird.”

“You’re telling me now. How is that strategy working out?”

“Poorly. You’re still sitting here being beautiful.”

Her smile returned, softer this time. “My entire life was decided before I was old enough to understand what a coven was. The magic I would study. The witches I could trust. The kind of man I might someday be allowed to choose, assuming Mother found a political advantage in my having one.”

“Romantic.”

“She would call it practical.” Carolina looked down at our nearly touching hands. “Wanting something simply because it makes me happy has always been treated as selfish. Dangerous, even.”

“And what do you want?”

Her gaze lifted to mine. “I want to know you.”

The simple answer hit harder than any declaration could have.

People in Arrhythmia knew me as Jacqueline’s cursed vampire. The clumsy one. The walking disaster who turned every doorway into a blood sport. Before that, I had been the newborn Vivienne discarded when responsibility became inconvenient. Even my human life had been reduced to a collection of memories I couldn’t safely revisit.

Carolina wanted to know me when I wasn’t sure there was enough of me left to learn.

“You may be disappointed,” I said.

“I was raised by Jacqueline Fortman. My expectations are unusually durable.”

“That isn’t the reassuring statement you think it is.”

“It wasn’t meant to reassure you.” She nudged her fingers closer. “Your turn. Do you want me, or are you responding to the bond?”

I considered lying. Something charming and confident would have been easier than handing her the ugly truth.

“I don’t know where the bond ends either,” I said. “I know being near you makes everything louder. I know when you vanished, it felt like someone had reached into my chest and taken something I hadn’t realized was there. But I also know you’re terrifying when you’re angry, you can insult me and save my dignity in the same breath, and you came back even though every sensible instinct told you not to.”

“That is not a glowing list of qualities.”

“I’m building toward one.”

“Take your time.”

“I want to know you too,” I said. “Not because Mack explained the metaphysics. Not because some ancient force shoved us together. I want to know what makes you laugh when you aren’t afraid someone will hear. I want to know what you would choose if nobody had planned your life for you. And I want to know why a woman capable of suspending coffee in midair still uses a cup with a lid designed by sadists.”

Carolina looked at the cup. “It was the only size they had.”

“A tragic origin story.”

Her fingers finally touched mine.

The contact was barely there, the brush of warm skin against cold. The bond responded as if she had placed her palm over my heart. Heat traveled up my hand and settled behind my ribs. Gold light appeared beneath our fingertips, soft enough to hide inside the privacy charm.

Neither of us pulled away.

“My mother will feel it if we let the bond deepen too quickly,” Carolina said. “She already sensed something outside the bar. If she confirms we’ve accepted each other, she won’t stop with threats.”

“Then we go slowly.”

“You confronted her alone on the same day you recovered the memory she cursed you to forget.”

“I can go slowly in a reckless, poorly supervised manner.”