Heartbreak makes careless gods of witches.

A love curse is cast at midnight, grief trembling through every syllable, salt tears dissolving into molten wax. No name. No face. Only the wish for the pain to end.

Magic listens too well.

The air fractures. The shadows bow.

Theo arrives with the quiet authority of a crown and a battlefield. Crown Prince of a nation that writes its borders in blood and oath. A man history tried, and failed, to kill. His gaze settles with terrifying certainty.

“You called,” he says, as if fate were a simple summons.

The curse coils around him, then snaps back like a leash.

Cold chains close around trembling wrists as he lifts her from the floor, unhurried, unyielding. “Love spells are promises,” Theo murmurs. “And I do not break what binds me.”

The tower vanishes behind them.

Only then does the truth land, sharp and irreversible: the witch the curse was meant to save is you.