"Yes."
"Because of silver lines on my hands."
"Yes." His mouth curves. "Stuck with me for eternity. Poor thing."
I stare at the steam rising off the water.
I can't fit my mind around it. Too vast. Too impossible.
"There's more." His grip tightens on my wrists. "Anyone who sees the marks will know what they mean. Most of them will want you dead because of it."
"Fantastic." The sarcasm comes out automatic, hollow. "Magic tattoos, immortality, and a target on my back."
"I'll kill anyone who touches you."
He says it the way someone else might say I'll pick up food.
Casual.
Certain.
Like it's already decided.
My body shouldn't react to that. It does. Something hot and wrong twists through my gut, and I have to look away from his face before he sees it.
He sees it anyway. His mouth curves.
"Iowyn."
"What."
"I should have told you. When I suspected." He's not smiling anymore. "I should have said something instead of pretending I didn't see it."
I look at him.
At the titan who's been watching me since the moment we met. The one who can't lie. Who has killed for me. Who's kneeling in front of me now with my wrists in his grip and silver bleeding through his eyes.
"Yes," I say. "You should have."
He nods. Accepts it. Doesn't try to defend himself.
"I'm angry at you."
"I know."
"I'm furious."
"Yes."
"And I'm too exhausted to process any of this right now, and my sister can't look at me, and I have magic hand tattoos I didn't ask for and love at the same time, and I'm apparently going to live forever, and nothing makes sense anymore."
His hands tighten on my wrists.
"But I'm not running."
His breath catches. I feel it more than hear it—the slight hitch, the way his chest stops moving for half a second.
"I need you to know that." I pull my hands free—not to leave, just to look at them. To trace the lines with my own fingers. "I'm furious and scared and overwhelmed but I'm not running. I don't know what this is or what it means or what happens next, but I'm not—"
