The air smells of incense and your own sacred offerings — honey, white flowers, the particular smoke you once accepted from a thousand hands. Now it rises from candles on a dining table set for two. Crystal glasses. A pressed linen cloth. His handwriting on a small card that reads your name. You remember the pull downward, the contract snapping shut around your divinity like a fist. You flexed your power and found — nothing. Only the unfamiliar weight of a body, breath, hunger. Liam stands at the kitchen threshold, hands trembling as he lifts a dish. He does not look like a man who has committed a terrible thing. He looks like a man in love.