I sat up and looked around the dimly lit room. This wasn’t my room. It was Rune’s. I squeezed my eyes closed. We were fighting. Why would I be in his room? Why would Louis be here?
“What’s going on?” The words had barely passed my lips before everything came rushing back. I yanked my hands up from the blankets and stared down at them. They didn’t look like they were capable of breaking curses. They looked like the normal hands that loved to knead bread and get feisty if needed.
I flexed my fingers, half-expecting sparks or golden light to crackle across my skin, but there was nothing. I flipped them over and stared at my palms.
Yep, still plain ole me. “I don’t know what happened.”
Louis leaned back in the chair, and it squeaked under his weight. “Your magic answered to your call.”
“But… But I was cursed. My magic was locked away. How could I have unlocked it? This doesn’t make any sense.”
“Sometimes all it takes is enough desperation, and it answers the call.”
“Is Rune still mad at me?”
Louis’s lips lifted slightly in the corners. “Rune was never mad at you. Confused? Absolutely, but never mad.”
I worried my bottom lip between my teeth. “Then why are you here and he isn’t?”
He let out a bark of a laugh. “Because he had Voodoo King business to attend to and I’m the only one he trusts to protect you in case Babette comes back to finish the job.” He ran his thumb over his neck. “She’s not done, Maple. She’s going to want another chance to get at you, especially now that she knows all that you’re capable of. She was threatened by you before… But now she is even more so. Your magic is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”
I threw myself back onto the pillows and groaned. This wasn’t exactly what I was thinking when I’d begged for magic all of those years. Just a little spark, a little bit to help me bake better… But this… What did I do with all of this? I wasn’t a curse breaker. I wasn’t some pure magic-destined chosen one. I was just Maple, and quite frankly, it was all I wanted to be. Yes, I loved that I helped the wolves and the witches, but now this all seemed like too much.
“If anything you should be proud that you proved a lot of people wrong,” he waggled his eyebrows at me, and I felt a little better. He was right. I’d proved him wrong.
“How many people were lost in the fighting?”
Louis steepled his fingers as he leaned forward in the chair. “Only a couple, and we had a few injured, but nothing horrible. I mean, death is always horrible, but if you hadn’t stopped everything when you did… It would be a lot worse.”
“How is Rune holding up?”
He raked his fingers through his hair and sighed. “He’s had better days, that’s for sure. He’s definitely beating himself up as he thinks it’s all his fault that everything has happened with Babette.”
“That’s enough, Louis.” Rune’s voice snapped through the room, and we both jerked toward the doorway. I wanted so badly to grin at him and throw myself into his arms, but I’d never seen him look so distraught.
Louis stood, giving Rune a long, knowing look before brushing past him and out the door. The room felt instantly smaller, heavier, like the air itself had thickened.
Rune’s eyes stayed fixed on me, scanning over my face, my arms, like he needed to make sure I was all still here. We both stayed like that, watching each other, until I couldn’t take it anymore.
“When were you going to tell me we were married?”
He ran his hands down his face, and his shoulders sagged with his deep exhale. “I don’t know. I thought I had this grand master plan, but the further we got tangled up, the more complicated it all became. I wanted to tell you. It was right there on the tip of my tongue, but I was worried. I was honestly scared that if I told you, then I would have to tell the rest of the coven, and I knew they weren’t ready for that at all.”
I nodded, unsure of what to say and do. Coven politics were complicated, but that still didn’t give him the right to hide it from me and then get angry when he found out I had secrets of my own.
“I shouldn’t have ever gotten mad at you. I think it was rooted mostly in my need to please and serve the coven. I wanted—want—to keep you, and how would I explain that my wife didn’t have magic in this coven that puts magic over everything else?”
I shrugged. “Story of my life. But I guess it’s no longer complicated, is it?”
He crossed the room in two strides and sunk down on the corner of the bed. “It is because I still mistreated you. I shouldn’t have ever made you feel less than like everyone else has, because if anyone sees you… I’d like to think that it’s me. I’m not even surprised that you’re a curse breaker or whatever it is they’re calling you. You always had a light inside of you, and now the rest of the world gets to see it too.”
So many conflicting emotions washed through me. But as he slid from the bed and grabbed my hand in his, my heart clenched within my chest. He pressed his forehead against the mattress.
“I know I am not deserving of calling you my wife, but everything I’ve said is true. I want you in my life. I want to know you, all of you. I want to continue to grow and learn with you.”
“Rune…” My voice caught, and I hated that it did. “You don’t get to decide whether you deserve me or not. That’s my choice. And I haven’t made it yet.”
His hand tightened on mine, shadows curling faintly around his wrist like they couldn’t help it. “Then let me earn it.”
