Page 40 of Smoke, Mirrors, & Misdemeanours

A home, he realized.

She smelled like a happy home.

His hands curled into loose fists beneath the table.

“You forgot to tell them what happened after,” she murmured, her voice dipping just low enough to send a slow shiver down his spine. “When you followed me from The Ivory Club and watched me march halfway across the district, fuming, before you finally worked up the nerve to speak to me.”

A soft gasp of delight came from Mrs. Tilly.

Ark tilted his head to look up at her, his own lips curling now. “Worked up the nerve, did I?”

She hummed, as if in deep consideration. “It did take you quite a while, didn’t it? Lurking in the shadows like a brooding spectre.”

Rhodes choked on a laugh. Caius, too refined to outright snort, simply lifted his teacup to his lips, looking like he was enjoying much more than his tea.

Ark leaned back, watching her with open indulgence. “I was giving you space.”

Her voice dipped even lower, almost absent of playfulness. “You certainly weren’t giving me space when those young, drunken demons decided to get bold.”

A ripple of something darker, sharper, passed through him. His fingers curled tighter against his knee, the memory crisp, immediate: Cassia, her spine straight, her magic crackling at her fingertips, ready to strike before he’d caught her wrist.

Cassia, standing alone, unshaken as the drunken demons circled like carrion birds, underestimating her, not realizing they were playing with something they couldn’t hope to handle.

Cassia, who had not needed saving—but whom he had stepped in for anyway.

And Cassia, watching now, studying him as if she could still feel the moment he’d closed his fingers around her wrist and spoken those words.

‘Allow me.’

For once, she didn’t fill the silence with another teasing quip. For once, she let the moment breathe.

Ark held her gaze, unblinking. “You were about to turn them into a very unfortunate cautionary tale.”

Her lips quirked. “I still think they deserved it.”

Dry laughter escaped him. “I don’t disagree.”

She inched closer, her voice a murmur meant for only him. “Then why did you stop me?”

Ark froze. Why? He could give her a dozen answers.

Because the whole of Angelene would turn against an Untethered half-witch in a heartbeat.

Because even before he really knew her, he knew she had stood alone too often.

Because—

“I wanted the pleasure for myself,” he murmured.

Her breath hitched. For a moment, neither moved. Then, she tilted her head, and a slow smile slipped into place. “How gallant of you.”

The bakery exhaled, conversation resuming around them, but as his eyes held hers, the tension between them remained suspended, unbroken. Her hand rested on the table between them, close enough that he could feel the warmth radiating from her skin. His fingers twitched against his knee—a small, involuntary betrayal. It would take nothing. A shift. A brush. A moment of contact he had no right to take.

Her voice, clear as a bell across a teahouse table, echoed in his mind: ‘You don’t touch me without my permission.’

Ark kept his hands where they were.

Mrs. Potts sighed wistfully. “A man drawn to a woman with a spine. I knew it.”