His smile faltered.
My grip tightened on the dagger. “You gave me to a male who’d burn down the world to keep me safe. Someone who loves me without conditions or deals.”
He sighed heavily. “Aelie.”
“Someone you willneverbe.”
I drove the blade right above his hip.
His breath punched out of him and his eyes widened. Heat gushed over my fingers. I left the blade inside him and ran.
Vaeris snarled.
I threw myself at the nearest door, shoulder-first, and the rotted wood splintered inward.
A shop. Bolts of fabric stacked against the walls. I scrambled over a cutting table, knocking shears and thread to the floor, searching for a door, a window, anything?—
“That was very foolish of you.”
Vaeris stood silhouetted in the frame, a hand pressed to his side. Blood seeped between his fingers, but he was already healing.
“Icame to you in good faith,” he said in a clipped voice. “I wanted to have a civilized conversation, and you stabbed me.”
I grabbed a pair of shears off the floor and held them up.
“Stabbed me.” He stepped inside, his lip curling. “Like some common cutpurse.”
Behind him, Runecloaks filled the doorway.
Vaeris balled his fists. “Living amongst the savages has changed you.”
“Stay back!”
He lunged at me.
I swung at him. His hand shot out and slammed me against the wall. The shears clattered from my grip and his fingers wrapped my neck.
“I’m disappointed, sweetling.”
“Fuck you.”
“Eloquent.” He sighed, then glanced at his Runecloaks. “Take her to my chambers.”
Ice spread through my body.
“I’ll be there later.” He released my throat and gripped my arm, hauling me off the wall. “And when you’ve calmed down, we’ll try this again.”
“I’ll never stop fighting you.”
He handed me to the Runecloaks, who yanked me out of the shop, the blood already drying on Vaeris’s armor.
Like it had never mattered at all.
I stood in the center of Vaeris’s room, trying not to breathe too deeply. It smelled too much like him—jasmine, oldparchment, and spice—clinging to the velvet drapes, the thick carpets, the silk sheets on a massive bed.
Books everywhere, crammed onto shelves, stacked on the floor, piled on a worktable cluttered with ink bottles and strange instruments. Runes glowed along the doorframe, the bedposts. Journals lay open, filled with sketches and notes.
This was worse than a cell.
