“A spell?” I groaned, closing my eyes. “I bloody well knew it. I knew it. The energy was just different when I walked in here.”
“You did?” Liora sounded more delighted than worried, and I opened my eyes to glare at her. “I mean, och,that’sinteresting.”
“What kind of spell was it, Liora?” I gave her a look that I sincerely hoped would make her be straight with me.
“Um.” Liora gulped. “A truth spell.”
“A truth spell?” A prickle of warning went down my back. Surely she didn’t mean…
“Aye. As in… you always tell the truth.” Liora’s voice dropped to a whisper, and she grimaced.
“I don’t lie, anyway. So that shouldn’t be a problem. Right?” I raised my voice slightly. Worry pinged through me. I didn’t like the idea of not being in control of my words.
“Well, there’s not lying, and then there’s inside thoughts that should best be kept… inside.” Liora’s teeth dug into that plush bottom lip of hers again and heat flashed through me.
“Like how I’d love to see your mouth wrapped around?—”
“Aye, like that,” Liora said, hurriedly interrupting me, her skin flushing a delicious shade of pink. “Also,really? And why? I thought you hated me.”
I started to say that Ididhate her, but the words physically wouldn’t come out of me. Instead my mouth opened, and a small guttural sound came out, but no words.
Bloody hell.I couldn’t say that I hated her because I didn’t.
Even if I thought that I did. Even though I blamed her for the breakup of my relationship. I didn’t, at my core, really hate Liora. She’d been an easy person to blame, particularly when rumors had followed me for years after, but I didn’t hate her. It took a lot for me toactuallyhate someone.
“I don’t hate you,” I admitted. “But I hate what your actions left me with. A broken relationship and everyone in town thinking I’d cheated on Avery. It was right shite.”
“I’m…” Liora’s face fell. “I guess I didn’t think about how that affected you.”
“Well, it wasn’t great, was it? And then you left. So did Avery. And I was here. Left to deal with the aftermath.” I raised a hand, cutting off whatever she was going to say next. It didn’t matter. She might have magick, but she couldn’t change the past. Atleast not that I knew of. What I needed to know was how to fix the spell I’d walked into.
Damn it all to hell and back. How had I gotten myself into this situation? Not only was I sharing my home with Liora, but she was actively practicing magick. Surely I should be able to boot her out for breaking some type of clause in the lease.
“Torin, I?—”
“Just fix this. I don’t even know how I feel about you doing magick in my house, but so far it doesn’t seem to be going well. Which tracks for you, if the past is any indication of how things will go.”
Liora winced, and I immediately felt bad for my words. But not bad enough to take them back.
“Listen, let me just see what I can find in the book to reverse this. Surely there’s a remedy and we’ll get you sorted in no time.”
“I would certainly hope you have a remedy.” My mouth dropped open as Liora’s gaze shifted away from mine. “Tell me you can fix this.”
“Um, I’m not quite sure. I just sort of picked it at random. I’ve only just discovered this book, you ken? It was in a box with my gran’s stuff, and I saw my name written in it. Look!” Liora grabbed a leather book from the table and paged to the front. Turning, she showed me her name scrawled next to a list of others. “See? It’s meant for me. I just… I haven’t quite had time to read it yet. I only just found it.”
“So instead of reading it through you just decided to flip to a page and try out a spell with zero preparation or research?” I raised an eyebrow at her, and she swallowed, her face growing pinker by the minute.
“I’m sorry! I…” Liora bit her lip again and I almost groaned.
“Stop biting your lip. It’s distracting.” I blanched as I realized I’d spoken my inside thoughts out loud again.
“Distracting, how?” Liora’s eyes widened and she licked her lips.
“That’s even worse.” I pointed at her mouth in frustration.
“Wait, but, why?” Liora genuinely looked confused, and I groaned out loud as I realized she didn’t understand that I was finding her both wildly distracting and desperately attractive.
“Just fix this. Now.” I needed to get away, to think, to clear my head so I could figure out what the hell this meant for me.