Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Ten years. He’d trusted Malachar for ten years.
Alessandro counted them off in the grey hour before dawn while Marina slept curled against his chest. Murder, it turned out, took up almost no space in the body. It was small and hot and entirely portable.
She’d told him everything the night before: every terrible detail Malachar had admitted. The curse. The manipulation. Her grandmother’s death. And with each word, Alessandro had felt the foundations of his worldview crack and crumble.
Every meeting. Every consultation. Every piece of advice that had seemed so helpful, so considered, all of it had been poison wrapped in silk.
And Alessandro had swallowed it eagerly, grateful for guidance, never questioning why the family advisor’s recommendations always seemed to make things slightly worse.
And Marina had tried to warn him, and he hadn’t listened.
He felt her stir, the gradual shift from deep sleep to drowsy awareness. She was warm against his side, her breath evening out against his chest, and for a moment he let himself pretend everything was fine.
It wasn’t.
“You’re brooding,” she murmured.
“I’m planning.”
“Those feel the same.” She pulled back enough to look at him, and he saw the shadows under her eyes. She hadn’t slept well. Neither had he. “What kind of planning?”
“The kind that ends with Malachar’s head on a spike.”
“Alessandro—”
“He killed your grandmother. He threatened you. He’s been destroying my family for two centuries.” He sat up, the sheets pooling at his waist. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t burn him where he stands.”
“Because he’s a demon.” Marina sat up, pulling the sheets around her shoulders. “A centuries-old demon with powers we don’t understand and contingencies we can’t predict. If you go in breathing fire, he’ll have planned for it.”
“So we plan better.”
“We plan smarter.” She met his eyes. “We get the book back first. Then we break the curse. Then, if there’s anything left of him to deal with, we deal with it.”
The logic was sound. He hated it.
“I want to kill him,” Alessandro said quietly. “The way I’ve never wanted to kill anything in my life.”
“I know.” She touched his face, gentle, grounding. “I can feel it rolling off you in waves. But dragon rage won’t help us. Dragon strategy might.”
He caught her hand. Held it against his cheek.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That I didn’t believe you sooner. That I let him get this far.”
“I know.”
“I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”
Pain crossed her face, quickly hidden. “Let’s just focus on surviving the next five days.”
The research confirmed everything.
They’d pulled Dante in that morning, along with Bea and Estelle. The kitsune mayor had listened to Marina’s story with narrowed eyes and then pulled out archives Alessandro hadn’t known existed: records of demon activity in Sweetwater Cove dating back centuries.
Malachar’s name appeared again and again. Always on the periphery. Always offering “assistance” to families facing magical misfortune.
And those families always ended up worse than before.
“Here.” Estelle pulled a particular document from the stack, a faded family tree with annotations in multiple handwritings.
“The Dravens before the curse. Prosperous shipbuilders. Three generations of stable wealth. And then…” She pointed to a name circled in red.
“Edmund Draven, 1824. Broke his oath to protect a witch’s descendants.
The dying witch cursed the bloodline. And Malachar’s name first appears that same year. ”
“As a ‘trusted advisor,’” Dante said, tracing the timeline. “Right there in the family ledger, helping Edmund manage his new misfortune. Same handwriting on every recommendation for the next forty years.”
“Helped manage it straight into the ground,” Alessandro muttered.
He remembered his grandfather’s stories: the slow decline, the desperate measures, the constant feeling that salvation was always just out of reach.
He’d thought it was the curse doing that.
Now he understood it was the curse plus Malachar, working in tandem to ensure the Dravens never recovered.
His grandfather had died broke and broken, still searching for answers. His father was following the same path. And Alessandro had been so determined to be different, so convinced he could fix it alone, that he’d walked right into the same trap.
“He’s a parasitic demon,” Estelle said, spreading documents across Marina’s kitchen table. “Rare, but not unheard of. They attach themselves to cursed bloodlines and feed on the suffering. The longer the curse lasts, the more power they accumulate.”
“And breaking the curse would break his food source,” Dante added.
“More than that. Two hundred years of accumulated power, gone in an instant. He’d be left weakened. Vulnerable.” Estelle’s smile was sharp. “That’s why he’s been so careful to sabotage every cure attempt. That’s why he killed Marina’s grandmother before she could use the recipe.”
Alessandro felt Marina flinch beside him. He reached for her hand under the table.
She let him take it, but her grip was limp. Distant.
She was there, but not the open, warm presence he’d grown accustomed to. Muted. Guarded. Holding back.
He’d hurt her. He’d dismissed her concerns when she’d needed him most.
“We need the book back,” Bea said. “Without the recipe, we can’t break the curse. Without breaking the curse, we can’t weaken Malachar enough to destroy him.”
“Then we get the book back,” Alessandro said.
“How? He’s not going to hand it over because we ask nicely.”
“No. But he might hand it over if the alternative is worse.” Alessandro looked around the table.
“Malachar’s power comes from secrecy. He’s been playing the helpful advisor for centuries because no one knew what he really was.
If we expose him, publicly, undeniably, he loses everything.
The town would unite against him. Every supernatural with a grievance would come hunting. ”
“You want to threaten him with exposure?”
“I want to give him a choice. Return the book and leave, or stay and face the consequences.”
Estelle considered this. “It might work. He’s accumulated too much power here to walk away easily, but if the choice is walking away or being destroyed…”
“It’s worth trying.” Marina’s voice was steady, careful. “And if he refuses, at least we’ll know where we stand.”
She still wasn’t looking at him.
Alessandro felt the distance between them.
They confronted Malachar that afternoon.
Not at his hotel; too many witnesses, too many escape routes. They found him walking along the harbor, enjoying the sea air like a man without enemies in the world.
“Alessandro.” Malachar’s smile was warm, welcoming. “Miss Pearl. What a pleasant—”
“We know what you are.”
The words came out flat. Final.
Malachar’s smile wavered, just for an instant. “I’m sure I don’t…”
“Two hundred years of feeding on my family’s curse.
Sabotaging every attempt to break it. Killing Marina’s grandmother when she got too close to a cure.
” Alessandro stepped forward, and he felt the dragon in his blood rise: heat building in his chest, smoke curling at the edges of his breath.
“We have records. Witnesses. Evidence that even your charm can’t explain away. ”
“This is absurd…”
“The recipe book.” Marina’s voice was steady. “You took it from my bakery. I want it back.”
Danger moved behind Malachar’s eyes. The charming facade cracked, and Alessandro saw what lay beneath: old and hungry and utterly without mercy.
“Careful, little seal. You’re making threats you can’t—”
“We’ve already informed Estelle,” Alessandro cut in. “If we’re not back at the bakery within an hour, with the book, she broadcasts everything to every supernatural network she can reach. By sunset, every creature within five hundred miles will know exactly what you are and what you’ve done.”
No one moved.
Malachar’s expression shifted through calculation, rage, and finally, reluctantly, acceptance.
“The book is at my hotel,” he said. “I’ll have it sent to the bakery.”
“No. You’ll go get it. Bring it to us. Now.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then I shift right here, in front of everyone, and we see who’s faster: you running or me burning.” Alessandro let smoke curl from his nostrils. “I’ve been looking for an excuse, Malachar. Don’t give me one.”
Malachar laughed, a cold, hollow sound.
“You’ve grown teeth, dragon boy. I didn’t expect that.” He adjusted his cuffs with exaggerated care. “Very well. You’ll have your book. But understand this: this isn’t over. You’ve made an enemy today. And I have a very, very long memory.”
He walked away toward his hotel, and Alessandro watched him go. This creature who had destroyed his family for centuries, who had killed Marina’s grandmother, who had smiled and offered condolences at funerals for people he’d murdered.
The dragon in his blood screamed to pursue. To shift right here in the afternoon sunlight and end this. Two centuries of suffering, paid for in fire.
But Marina’s hand found his arm.
“Not yet.” Her grip tightened on his arm. “We need the book first. We need to be smart.”
“I hate being smart.”
“I know.” For just a moment, a flicker of warmth slipped through the walls she’d built. “But smart is how we win.”
They stood on the harbor, salt wind whipping around them, and waited.
Forty minutes later, a hotel bellhop arrived with the recipe book wrapped in brown paper. Marina took it with trembling hands, opening the cover to verify it was really her grandmother’s book: the familiar handwriting, the water-stained pages, the smell of old paper and magic.
It was real. He hadn’t substituted a fake.
“Why would he give it back?” Alessandro asked, unable to trust their luck. “He knows it can destroy him.”
“Because he’s planning something else,” Marina said. “He thinks he has time. He thinks we don’t know how to use it yet.”
“Do we?”
She looked down at the book, at the recipe for Curse-Breaking Cake that had been hidden in plain sight for decades.
“We’re about to find out.”
The book felt heavier in her arms than it should have. She tucked it inside her jacket anyway and started for home.
Back at the bakery, Marina held her grandmother’s book like a relic. Her fingers traced the worn leather, the familiar handwriting, the pages that contained the key to everything.
“We did it,” Dante said, pouring celebratory whiskey that no one seemed inclined to drink. “The bastard actually backed down.”
“For now,” Bea warned. “He said it himself: this isn’t over.”
“We’ll be ready.” Alessandro was watching Marina, searching for the warmth that used to flow so freely between them. She was still guarded. Still distant. “We have the book. We can prepare the curse-breaking ritual. By the time the full moon rises…”
“Five days.” Marina turned the book over in her hands. “The full moon is in five days.”
“Five days to break a curse that’s lasted two centuries.” Dante raised his glass. “I’d say those are decent odds.”
No one else raised theirs.
After Dante and Bea and Estelle had gone, Alessandro found Marina in the kitchen, staring out the window at the darkening sky.
“Marina.”
She didn’t turn. “Yes?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
The lie landed between them, obvious as a locked door.
“Talk to me. Please.”
She finally turned, and what he saw in her face stopped him. Worse than anger. Worse than grief.
Resignation, with the lights already dimming behind it.
“I can’t stop thinking about it,” she said. “How quickly you dismissed me. How alone I felt, standing in this kitchen, trying to warn you about someone who wanted to hurt us both. And you chose him, Alessandro. You chose to believe a demon over me.”
“I was wrong…”
“I know you were wrong. You’ve apologized. I’ve accepted it.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “But accepting isn’t the same as forgetting. And I can’t forget how that felt.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying maybe we should think about what happens when the full moon rises. Maybe we should consider that the bond breaking might be… for the best.”
The words landed.
“Marina…”
“I love you. God help me, I do. But love isn’t enough if I’m always going to be second-guessed. Always going to feel like my voice doesn’t matter.” Her eyes were wet. “You hurt me. Really hurt me. And I don’t know if I can get past that.”
Alessandro reached for her. She stepped back.
“Don’t. Not right now.” She picked up the recipe book. “We have five days to break this curse. Let’s focus on that. And when it’s over… we can decide what comes next.”
She went upstairs.
Alessandro stood alone in the kitchen, surrounded by the smell of bread and the weight of everything he’d destroyed.
Her grief bled into him. Not the dramatic sobs of immediate grief, but the slow, steady leak of hope draining away.
He thought about his grandfather’s final words: Don’t make my mistakes.
Live your life. He’d spent ten years trying to honor that advice while simultaneously ignoring it.
He’d searched for a cure to the curse, yes, but he’d done it alone.
He’d pushed away everyone who tried to help.
He’d treated partnership as weakness and isolation as strength.
And now he was losing the one person who’d actually seen him, not the Draven heir, not the arrogant attorney, but Alessandro. The man who burned toast and couldn’t roll fondant and had started smiling at customers without meaning to.
Alessandro stayed in the kitchen for a long time after she’d gone, not knowing how to fix things but determined to try.
He washed the dishes. Wiped down the counters.
Found a sponge and scrubbed at a stain that had been there since before he arrived.
Stupid, useless gestures. But they were something.
Eventually, her crying stopped. The silence that replaced it was worse.