He cast the spell. When I repeated my answer, he leaned forward to look in my eyes, then nearly toppled backward laughing.

“I don’t believe it. You are serious. Either that, or my casting is off, and I think that must be it, because I can’t imagine you’d ever pick beauty over brains.”

“No? Think about it. If you pick brains, you’d be smart enough to know exactly how ugly you were. But if you picked beauty, you’d be too dumb to know the difference. I’d rather be happy than miserable. And I’m sure the sex would be better, too. Well, a lot more plentiful at least. Go with option A, and you might as well join the priesthood.”

He shook his head, still chuckling. “Well, I’m sticking with option A. Brains over beauty for me any day.”

His eyes darkened.

I sputtered a laugh. “Liar.”

He sighed. “You got me with the celibacy angle.”

I laughed. He lifted me onto his lap and kissed me.

After a moment, he pulled back slowly. “I need you to promise me something, Eve.”

“Hmm?”

“If things go wrong in there—badly wrong, and you get into a situation you can’t get out of…” He hesitated, then wrapped his hand around mine. “The Fates said if you change your mind, at any point, and you need to become an angel—”

“No.”

He took my chin in his hand and lifted my face to his.

I shook my head. “I’ll find another way, Kris. There’s always another way. I’ll have the hellsbane potion, remember? Anything goes wrong, I gulp that, and I’m home free faster than the Creator could make me an angel.”

“But if you ever did get stuck—if that was the only way out, I need to know you’ll take it.” When I hesitated, he stroked his finger across my cheek. “If it did come to that, Eve, we’d find a way. I’d find one for us. For now and forever. I say it and I mean it. I backed down once, and I’ll never do it again.”

“Backed down? You never—”

“I didn’t have any say in your leaving last time, but I had years to fight your decision, twelve years to say ‘I want you back and I don’t care if it means giving up everything else to get you.’ But I never did. Not because I didn’t love you, or I didn’t love you enough, but because I was a coward.”

“You weren’t—”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t want me back. So I told myself that I’d wait, give you time to come to me, and when you didn’t I convinced myself that my fears were well-founded, that you’d only wanted me for who I was and what I could give you…and even that wasn’t worth staying with me for.”