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When had it started to feel wrong? I can’t remember the date, only the sensation—like a brand pressed under my own skin, shame burning me from the inside out.

“But my magic,” I explain, “it has a mind of its own … like your siren, I can’t always control it. It thought that the more you owed me, the longer I could guarantee that you were in my life. Of course, that strategy came to an abrupt end the moment you cast your final wish.”

That’s when all my crafty plans came crashing down. I was sabotaged by my own power.

“That final wish of yours,” I continue, “it was bigger than either of us. You wanted me, I was falling for you and it wasn’t right, Callie. I knew it wasn’t right. Not when you were sixteen. But I could be patient. For my little siren, my mate, I could.”

I already waited centuries for her. Had she needed it, I could wait centuries more. In theory. That’s what I told myself every time I got too close and had to flee. That keeping my distance was in her best interest, that I was strong enough to endure this sweet agony.

Fucking lies, all of it.

I wasn’t strong enough. After the night of Callie’s dance, had I managed to leave before her last wish, I might’ve kept my distance for a week, maybe two. I doubt I could’ve lasted a month.

My magic, as it turns out, is far, far stronger than my will ever was.

“But that wish …” I say, remembering that fateful evening, “I was a prisoner to it.”

“Whatwish?” she asks, looking lost.

The one that kept me from you.All this time and she still has no idea.

“Your last one,” I say. “On the night of the dance—‘From flame to ashes, dawn to dusk, for the rest of our lives, be mine always, Desmond Flynn.’”

Those words have been seared into me. Callie might never know just how many lonely nights I murmured them to myself. Or that I’ve sketched the look on her face when she spoke them a hundred times, trying to capture and recapture everything she was and wanted in that moment. All so that I could hold onto her while we were apart.

Her face heats. “You never granted that one.”

I tilt my head just the slightest. “Are you sure about that?”

The flush dies away from her skin. She looks like someone doused her in ice water.

“You … you granted it?” she says.

“I did.”

What I’d give to not have. How our lives would’ve been different if that hadn’t happened. I have to hope that my magic knew something I didn’t; that this was the better road to take.

Callie’s eyes move to her bracelet.“But the beads never showed up …”

“They wouldn’t, since you were already paying them off. We both were.” Damn my magic for that.

Slowly her gaze rises up to meet mine. “What do you mean?” she breathes.

“A favor as large as the one you requested requires steep payment,” I say. “Do you think my magic would allow you to buy yourself a mate so easily? That kind of favor requires a good dose of heartbreak and years of waiting—seven years, to be precise.”

Seven years that are finally, thankfully, over.

“Every day after your last wish, I worked myself raw trying to get close to you.” The sheer agony of it all. “And every day I was stopped by my very own magic, which had turned on me.

Callie begins to shake, and I can see all that brittle bitterness of hers falling away. Peering out from beneath it, she’s that same innocent girl she’s always been. Though perhapsinnocentis the wrong word. Perhapshopefulis a better one.

“Then one day,” I say, “the magic’s hold on me loosened. I tried to approach you like I had a thousand times before, and this time, the magic didn’t stop me.

“Finally, after the longest seven years of my life, I was able to come back to my love, my mate. The sweet siren that loved my darkness, and my bargains, and my company when I was no one and nothing more than Desmond Flynn. The woman that took fate into her own hands when she spoke those ancient vows and declared herself mine.”

It’s dawning on her. This is real.Weare real.

All those evenings she watched me leave her, those are the illusion. Because the truth is, I have searched worlds for her, looked for her for centuries. I’ve held her a thousand times in my dreams, and I have died a thousand times upon waking.