He squeezed my wrist, scowling. Just when I thought he might admonish me or sweep off again, he stepped into me, leaning down far enough almost to allow his forehead to touch mine, the silken strands of his dark hair falling to mingle with my curls.

And now I had an answer as to what he, in his own Erik way, had been trying to tell me.

Our moments together had been brief. But each more intense than the last, as if building toward this moment. One that had maybe become too intense. And yet . . . I couldn’t pull away.

“Tell me what to do,” I said in a whisper. “The curse. Tell me how to break it. Tell me how to set you free and I will.”

“There is no cure,” he answered, a tremor in his tone, like he was trying to convince himself to let me go even as I was trying to convince myself to pull free. “The curse is absolute, and there is no hope of undoing it.”

“Then I’ll change it,” I said. Because, curse or not, the world still answered to certain rules. My world might have been irrevocably altered since we’d moved into Moldavia, but the earth was still spinning and he and I were still here. Separated by time and death but, simultaneously, by nothing at all. If that was possible, then so was his freedom.

My freight train thoughts halted then, stalled the instant he moved in by another inch, his lips hovering that much closer to mine.

Would he really . . . ?

More importantly . . . did I want him to?

Seriously. What was I doing? I should have been stepping back from this stranger who I already knew was dead. And what about Lucas? Did a kiss in a dream count as a real kiss—something that could potentially destroy what awaited me in reality? That question alone should have been enough for me to draw away. But then . . . what I wanted in that moment was clear enough since I wasn’t stepping back.

“Stephanie.”

Before I could stop them, my lids fluttered to half-mast, my own lips parting in anticipation. Because no one had ever said my name that way. Soft as a prayer, each syllable laced with longing.

Erik guided my hand down, his grip on my wrist loosening so that his fingers, as rough and cool as I remembered them, could trail to find and twine mine. He came closer, until we were pressed together, just a breath apart, his hand clutching mine tightly, as though we weren’t hovering on the verge of a kiss, but at the edge of some great divide. I gripped his hand in return, squeezing, a response that I’d meant as encouragement.

Instead, the action seemed to jar him from a spell. He pulled back, his fingers releasing my unyielding ones, his expression nothing short of horrified.

“Forgive me,” he said, his words made more of breath than voice. “I . . . should not have dared come to you again.”