“Then I don’t want you to break the spell,” Mateo said.

“I’m ready to do it.”

“Well, I’m not. This Steadfast thing—what we did that day on the beach, what we were together—it was amazing. It felt like I’d been waiting my whole life to be a part of something like that.”

Me too, Nadia wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come out. She combed one hand through his hair, shaking out the loose strands, checking her work—hey, this looked pretty good. But her fingers trembled, and her breaths were coming shallow and fast as she struggled against tears.

“Don’t take it away from me,” Mateo said. “Or from yourself. As scary and as weird as this is, being your Steadfast—I know it’s what I was meant to do. Like being a witch is what you’re meant to do. It’s a part of us. You can’t just … end it like it never happened.”

Nadia sat back and set the scissors down. “You know I’m telling you the truth about how dangerous it is.”

“Yeah. I do. You want to protect the people you love. I do, too. But we fall apart or we stand together, right?”

It flowed into her like sunlight, took her tears away. If Mateo could bear the curse, and still have the courage to stand as her Steadfast and take Elizabeth on—how could she do any less? She still owed Dad and Cole all her protection, but with Elizabeth’s evil unfolding everywhere around them, the only thing for Nadia to do was fight. At least she wasn’t fighting alone.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You’re right. We stand together.”

“Together.” Mateo held his hand out, and she took it. When their eyes met again, Nadia flushed with warmth. She kept waiting for him to say something else, but he didn’t. Maybe he couldn’t, if he felt as shaky as she did. If the feeling of his hand in hers did half as much to him as it did to her—

Once again she remembered Elizabeth standing in the hallway, promising to make Mateo love her if it suited her purposes.

If Nadia leaned forward right now—the way Mateo had begun to—if she kissed him and they were together, would Elizabeth know? She’d sensed the spell of forgetting right away; who could guess how deeply she was wound into Mateo’s mind?

If Elizabeth realized Nadia and Mateo were together, she might take Mateo back. She might make him believe that he’d always loved Elizabeth. Could Nadia bear that? Once again she remembered Elizabeth’s words to her: You’ve loved and lost, haven’t you?

And Mateo had said the only thing keeping him from losing it was the fact that Elizabeth hadn’t deceived him in this one, last, terrible way.

Nadia pulled back. Mateo blinked, obviously caught off guard.

“Nadia!” Cole’s voice sang from downstairs. “Are you home yet?”

That broke the sudden awkwardness, and both of them started to laugh from embarrassment. “Little brothers,” Nadia said. “They have amazing timing.”