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Carolina’s expression shifted, something vulnerable breaking through her careful composure. “Why would I laugh?”

“Everyone laughs.” The words came out bitter, automatic. “It’s the curse. It makes me entertaining.”

“I’m not everyone,” she said, and there was an edge to her voice now. Anger, maybe. Or hurt. “And I know exactly what my mother’s curse feels like. I’ve seen her use it before.”

“You have?”

She looked away, stacking boxes on the shelf with precise, controlled movements. “There was a boy, when I was seventeen. A human who got too curious about the coven. She cursed him to forget his own name. He wandered the streets for three days, crying, trying to remember who he was.” Her voice dropped. “I found him on the fourth day. He’d walked into traffic.”

I went cold. “She killed him?”

“She erased him.” Carolina turned back to me, her eyes fierce. “So no, Logan. I don’t laugh at her curses. I know what they cost.”

We stood there in the aisle, surrounded by cereal and canned goods and the weight of her mother’s cruelty, and I felt something shift between us. Not just the bond, though that was there, humming like a second heartbeat. Something else. Understanding. Recognition.

“I should go,” she said, but she didn’t move.

“Carolina...”

“Don’t.” She held up a hand, her fingers trembling slightly. “Don’t say whatever you’re going to say. Not here. Not where someone might hear.”

“Then where?”

She hesitated, then pulled out her phone, typing quickly. A moment later, mine buzzed.

The library. Rare books section. Tomorrow evening, an hour before closing.

She walked away before I could respond, her red hair swinging behind her like a warning flag.

The library the following evening was nearly empty, with just a few students studying and an elderly shifter dozing in the periodicals. I found the rare books section in the back, a dim corner behind locked glass cabinets and leather-bound volumes that smelled like dust and centuries.

Carolina was waiting, perched on a windowsill with a book open in her lap. She wasn’t reading. She was watching the door.

“You actually came.” She sounded almost surprised.

“Was there a chance I wouldn’t?”

“There should have been.” Carolina closed the book and set it aside. “We can’t keep doing this.”

“And yet here we both are.”

Her lips curved despite her best efforts. “Neither of us is very good at staying away, are we?”

“Apparently, self-preservation is no match for mutual bad judgment.”

I sat on the opposite end of the windowsill, careful to leave space between us. The bond didn’t like the space. It tugged at me, pulling me toward her like gravity.

“What are we doing?” I asked.

“Being reckless.” She smiled, but it was sad. “My mother would kill us both if she knew we were meeting like this.”

“Then why do it?”

She looked at me, really looked, and I saw the answer in her eyes before she spoke. “Because when I’m with you, I don’t feel like her daughter. I don’t feel like the coven’s heir or the next High Priestess or any of the roles I’m supposed to play.” She hugged her knees to her chest, small and vulnerable in a way that didn’t match her fierce reputation. “I just feel like... me.”

I understood that. God, I understood it. For a year, I’d been the cursed vampire. The town joke. The clumsy disaster. But when Carolina looked at me, I wasn’t any of those things. I was just Logan.

“Tell me about the curse,” I said, because I needed to understand what we were up against. “How does it work? Exactly?”