Ash. Ash was here.

My chest expanded.

And then Ash turned and I saw that his arm was wrapped around a pretty brunette. She smiled up at him, and he leaned down and kissed her nose, and they both laughed. The sun glinted off a dazzling ring on her left hand.

Ash was here with another woman. The same Ash who’d almost kissed me this afternoon, who’d pressed his hard-on against me, who’d smelled and kissed my hair as if it were the only thing he wanted to smell and kiss ever again. A flash of rage—hot and bright—and then I remembered the way he’d stepped away from me in the courtyard, the unsteady, troubled way he’d said that was wrong, I’m so sorry. How miserable he’d looked when he said that we needed to talk tonight.

Of course. It all made sense now—the aborted kiss, the misery, the talk.

My chest contracted, and somewhere inside myself, a valiant, flickering little hope was snuffed out, leaving only smoke and the faint whiff of what could have been.

“He asked her to marry him yesterday,” Merlin said, his polished voice cutting through the wind. “So you see how things are.”

It felt like I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.

But yes, I could see how things were. I certainly could do that.

“This is what I would have protected you from,” he continued quietly. “Discovering this so, ah, publicly.”

I made myself turn away from the happy couple, feeling disoriented, feeling weak. “Of course he would have met someone else,” I mumbled, mostly to myself. “It makes sense. He’s not a priest. Why wouldn’t he be with someone?”

But I had honestly never thought of Ash with another woman, it had never occurred to me to imagine such a thing, and the reality of it felt almost cruel in its obviousness. He was handsome and famous and kind and delightful, and why wouldn’t he fall in love with a beautiful woman? Why hadn’t I thought of this?

Whatever my reasons had been, I felt terribly and horribly ashamed. Ashamed of falling in love with a man I didn’t know, ashamed of hoping he’d remember something that happened in another country four years ago, ashamed of being young and clueless and helpless and so utterly stupid.

“I should go,” I said suddenly, feeling a familiar ache at my throat. “I need to go.”

Merlin didn’t say anything to convince me otherwise, he merely nodded. “You’re a good person, Greer. And you deserve happiness. I only ask that you keep your kisses to yourself a while longer. And someday, there will be a happily ever after for you too.”

I didn’t want to keep my kisses to myself, though, and I certainly didn’t want a thin promise of someday. I wanted Ash, and this afternoon in the courtyard had sealed my fate. I was doomed to want him and not have him, and like the Lady of Shalott, I’d be weaving pictures of my pain and devotion for years to come.

“Goodbye,” I muttered, swallowing past the knot in my throat and turning away. Merlin stayed in the corner, his gaze like iron chains weighing me down as I tried to flee, linking me to him and his awful words. I had this miserable portent that I would be dragging these chains for years. My curse, my punishment for a crime I couldn’t have stopped myself from committing, even now.

A curse for a kiss. That’s how wizards worked, wasn’t it?

There would be tears, I knew, and soon. I kept my head down as I walked, trying to hurry without actually seeing what was in front of me, navigating around tipsy businessman and lobbyists and state senators, trying not to run into the low sofas and glass tables, remembering vaguely that the elevator had been in the center of the patio.

And of course, since I wasn’t watching where I was going, since my mind was so busy with Merlin’s words and my heart was too preoccupied with its mortal wound, I tripped over a step I hadn’t seen and stumbled right into Ash’s hard body.

I hadn’t known he was there, had been trying to avoid coming anywhere near him, in fact, but the moment I put my hands against his solid chest, the moment he grabbed my elbows to catch me, I knew it was him. That body and those hands…the memory of them had been etched into my brain forever. More than etched—branded.

My cheeks flamed red with humiliation, my pulse spiking and my chest caving in from the weight of this embarrassing moment. Being held by the only man I ever wanted to hold me…and at the same moment that fantasy had to be euthanized. At the same moment I realized he was going to be married to another woman.

Get away get away get away, my mind screamed in a rabbit-shriek of panic, but my body keened for his touch, begging me to press closer to him, melt into this moment forever.

I found a breath but I couldn’t find my voice. He’d stolen it.

“Greer,” he exhaled. His pupils had shrunk and then dilated into wide black pools, as if he’d stepped through an invisible doorway into some sort of darkness no one else could see. He flicked his tongue across his lower lip, as if unconsciously remembering our kiss, remembering this afternoon, and I let out a tiny helpless noise that only he could hear. His grip tightened on my elbows.

I could feel Merlin watching me, his elegant hands inside his elegant pockets, waiting to see what I would do. Waiting to see if I still carried his chains and his warnings in my heart.

“I’m so sorry,” I mumbled to Ash’s chest, ducking my head down. “Excuse me.”

I tried to take a step back, but his hands stayed firm on my arms, his eyes searing into the top of my head. He wasn’t letting me go, and I didn’t want him to let me go, but I couldn’t do whatever this was. I couldn’t do the fake acquaintance, catching-up small talk thing. I couldn’t do the pretending and the smiling and the polite questions when I knew that he’d be going home with his someday wife tonight.