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Fletcher’s magic awakened within me, taking hold of me. And for the first time in my life, it overpowered my own magic. It exploded in me, taking up all the spaces of my body. It shined strong and bright as it vaulted in electric violet bands and corkscrews along my arms and legs.

Tears spilled down my cheeks as Fletcher sat up, smiling at me. His eyes roamed over the beauty he had created around me as the recoil of magic glistened in starry clumps from his hands to his elbows, fading out toward his shoulders .

“Fletcher, I-I-I didn’t know this is what I was supposed to do. I didn’t do all this for you.”

He nodded once, resting his hands on his thighs, elbows pointed outward. “Yes, you did. You made me a garden, don’t you remember?”

I did. After my magic had taken over and I had unknowingly forced him to have sex with me that very first time. I had found him in a canyon and directed my magic to build him a vast garden across the cliffs and narrow path beneath us as I bowed forward at his feet.

“Now, typically this would be done with my own magic so that it knows my desires and my intent. So that it can remember this always.”

I felt a ping of sadness looking at Fletcher’s eyes roaming my skin with a longing for his magic.

If only I could give it back to him. It would have been that much more meaningful for him if he had it.

“Clearly your magic is very happy,” I gestured to my glowing lilac limbs.

“I think it knows.” As if his magic knew the pledging was over, the violet coils reversed as they drained, and my magic replaced it for a moment before it winked out completely.

He smirked as he got to his feet and stepped into the glittering star around me. The warmth of his bare skin radiated over mine as he cupped my cheek in one hand and played with the petals of a rose on my shoulder with the other. “Ripley, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

A harsh blush took over my cheeks, matching the color from the roses climbing up my body, petals gently moving.

He lowered his head and took my bottom lip between his teeth, sucking on it before his teeth nibbled.

I drew in a deep breath, startled by just how much pleasure filled me. It was as if the scars from today had disintegrated. In this moment, I was married. I was married to Fletcher.

He bent closer to me, hands running down my back, my bottom, then my thighs before bringing them up around his waist. He turned and marched me to the dining room table, bent over, and lowered me slowly onto my back.

“You mean everything to me,” he whispered as his tongue traveled down between the valley of my breasts, “and I would,” over my belly button, “do anything for you,” and down to my wet entrance.

My back arched off the table at his first lick.

His hot breath covered my sensitive flesh as he chuckled softly.

In a long, drawn-out stroke of his tongue, he licked me, every fold.

And when his tongue lapped down with a wave of passion, a moan escaped from my lips.

His tongue entered me with intensity as his hands went under my thighs and back over to keep them steady on his shoulders.

The pleasure was so extreme that I shivered and bucked my hips toward him, goosebumps rising along my skin.

He moved upward and unwrapped one hand to let one of his fingers slide deeply into me.

“Fletcher,” I gasped.

He increased the speed of each treacherous lick and twitch of his finger until I was on the cusp of throbbing around him. The need was almost unbearable—all-consuming.

“Say my name again,” he whispered against me before pausing with his finger buried to his knuckle in me.

The interruption of his movements forced me to shout his name in protest. “ Fletcher! ”

He chuckled and answered my plea by entering me with two fingers, causing so much pleasant surprise that I released around them .

He slid out of me and stood. In a quick movement, he grabbed me by my thighs and yanked me toward him until my bottom was off the edge of the table.

I squealed in a laugh as he caught me, bent to align himself with me, and sent himself thrusting deeply.

I growled and gripped the edge of the table as Fletcher bent over me. I wrapped my legs around his waist as he trailed eager kisses along my collar bone. “My princess.”

Then, he was moving, rough and fast, as his hand came to my breast. My chase returned tenfold as he grabbed locks of my hair, wrapped them dotingly around my wrists, then pulled my hands above my head.

“Today, you looked decadent.” His lips came to mine, tongues meeting in a frenzy without stopping the rhythm of his thrusts.

“This is all I wanted to do to you when I saw you on that stage.”

His speed increased as he looked into my black-rimmed eyes, a reminder of today’s betrayal that I wanted to push away.

His breathing increased as his arms banded around my lower back and pulled me down onto him so that he reached the deepest part of me.

My vision became blurry, my body sweaty, and time felt fluid.

We made love in sync—in a way that intertwined our souls, never to be parted throughout this lifetime and beyond.

Pleasure so intense engulfed me that I swore I could see through space and gravity.

And when we both came in an eruption of heavy pants and sweat and cum, he collapsed onto me, his chest pressing against me. I could feel his heart racing toward a calm state beneath my cheek. And when I thought maybe his heart was beating for me, tears filled my eyes.

In a soft whisper, Fletcher asked, “What’s wrong?”

I sniffed and tried to get myself out from under him. He realized what I was trying to do, so he pulled himself out of me and sat me up on the table with a kiss on my cheek.

“Tell me, Ripley.”

I wiped away the tears with the back of my hand. “I’m sorry. I never learn.”

His brows knitted and his cinnamon eyes glossed over with worry. “What are you talking about?”

“I desperately don’t want to be married to him. I can’t believe I keep falling for these traps that keep us apart. I’ve let you down. ”

His brows turned down as his jaw tensed.

His arms wrapped around me, hand curling around my head.

“You haven’t let me down. Elizy has. Ripley, you are up against some pretty persistent people.

This is on them, not you.” He pulled away, stroking my hair off my shoulder and onto my back.

“Please don’t let this mar your sense of compassion. Because I’m wildly attracted to it.”

I frowned. “How do I get out of this marriage?”

A long exhale released from his nose as he stared at me and said, “I’m not sure if it can be reversed.”

I gaped at him, dread trickling up my spine. “Do not tell me that.”

He pressed his lips.

“There has to be a way. I’d sell my magic—my soul to get out of this.”

Then, it hit me. Something Aldris had said two months ago when I had blindly run from him the time I thought he had stolen my blood.

You step foot in the sorceress’s den, you don’t leave unless you sell your soul. She makes really unfair, one-sided bargains for those desperate enough to sell their souls to her .

I could still hear her raspy voice in my head, calming me, luring me away through the woods, promising me whatever I wanted.

The sorceress’s den. I gasped as I scrambled off the table. “I need clothes.”

“What? Why?”

The den. That was it. I could feel it in my bones the same way I could feel the pulse of the ?lden Lands.

The answers lay with the sorceress. I darted up the stairs, rustling through Aldris’s drawers and finding a large gray t-shirt that I could wear as a dress.

I gripped the vines around me and gently unraveled myself, laying them neatly on the edge of the bed so that I could keep them forever.

Fletcher stood behind me, spinning me around by my shoulder. “Where are you going?”

I smiled and said, “I know how to rectify this.” I rounded him and went back to the dresser, slipping on the shirt and stepping into a pair of red boxer shorts. “I have to talk to someone.”

His brows pulled up in surprise. “Right now?”

As I threaded my long hair through the neck hole of the shirt, I responded, “Don’t you want our bond back? Don’t you want my marriage broken?”

“Of course, but not right now . ”

I shrugged as I weaved the last of my hair out of the shirt and back onto the ground in a clump. “Well, I want it back right now. So I have to go.”

He gripped my arm. “No, no. Please don’t leave. I don’t know when I’ll see you again. Between your duties, Graff, and me keeping up appearances with the Cidris, I really just need to be with you right now.”

I smiled and cupped his cheek in my hand. “I know, Fletcher. I’m sorry. But, I have to do this.” Then, my hands were flying through my hair, gathering it in a thick rope and twirling it atop my head. “I can’t be married to him one second longer. It’s making me sick.”

There was a look of loss roiling in his eyes, but he released a defeated sigh, flicking his magic-filled fingers toward my hair. A rose vine grew around my bun to keep it locked in place—but maybe more to remind me of his pledge before I left.

“I’m calling Graff to pick me up, so get dressed.”

He groaned. “Is there anything I can do to entice you to stay?”

“Nothing as enticing as dissolving my marriage.”

Fletcher rolled his eyes. “Hang on,” he muttered as he knelt by the bed, reached under, and tossed me a pair of black high-top sneakers and a pair of socks. “ Here, I got these for you in case Elizy decided not to dress you properly.”

“Thank you!” In mid-scramble to get the shoes on, he interrupted me.

“Wait, wait. Are you comfortable in those clothes?” He reached under again, pulling out four piles of neatly folded clothes.

“I bought you a few other things. Pants, shirts, dresses, overalls, underwear, bras…” He scratched the back of his head as a light blush took over his cheeks.

“I don’t really know what you like to wear, so I kind of just got you a little bit of everything. ”

I continued to lace up the sneakers and smiled. “Thank you for thinking of me. I love all those things. You did great. But I’m already dressed for now. This smells like you, and I like it.”

“Well,” he stood, chuckling while dressing himself in a pair of black pants and a loose black t-shirt, “the top is mine, but the boxers are Aldris’s.”

I rolled my eyes. “Okay, give me some underwear and…” I eyed the piles, “some stretchy pants?”

Fletcher smiled and sifted through the clothing, finding a pair of tight, navy-blue pants. He tossed that to me with a pair of nude undies .

As soon as we were dressed, Graff materialized in front of us.

His eyes roamed from me to Fletcher and back to me with a harsh look in his eyes that stemmed from some undertone of pain. The room filled with tension between the three of us.

“Let’s go,” I ordered.

Fletcher stepped to Graff and said in a low, demanding voice, “You take care of her.”

Graff scoffed. “You don’t need to tell me. She is my wife . No matter how many times you fuck her,” his arm snaked intrusively around my shoulders, “I’m the only one who’s bonded to her by marriage .”

Fletcher’s demeanor shifted, muscles tensing, expression harshening.

“Let me enlighten you,” Graff continued, “I am the one who chooses where she goes outside the barrier. So don’t fucking push me more than you already have.”

Fletcher’s eyes turned venomous, but the rest of him remained composed. His chin tipped up. “You keep her from me, and it will be the biggest mistake of your life. ”

Graff narrowed his eyes as I shrugged him off me, but he just brought his hand back up and draped it over my shoulders again and smiled. “Bye, Darkly.”

Then, we were broken apart, pieces at the mercy of the wind, but I took control of the direction. I knew where I needed to go.

The sorceress’s den.