Latham had nothing to say to that, so he turned on his heel and walked away, the expectation for her to follow clear. Laeknir was right—better to get this done and over with. She followed him through the gates, giving a small wave to the Fae who still stood guard, and paid no mind to the other whose eyes never left her.
They walked for some time in silence, but as soon as they were out of earshot of the guards at the gate, Latham rounded on her.
“What the fuck?!” he yelled.
“What do you have to be angry about, Latham? You got what you wanted,” Solveig said, voice level.
“That’s not how I wanted it to happen!”
“I’m sorry for the inconvenience,General.”
“Drop the act, Solveig. I know you must be furious.”
“You don’t know anything,” she said quietly.
“Then tell me!”
“Why would I tell you anything? You’ll just turn around and use it against me.”
“I would never do that,” he scolded. Solveig couldn’t believe her ears. Did he think he could get away with this? Did he not remember that he outed her identity? Once the council put the pieces together, her anonymity would be ruined.
“You’re joking, right? That’s all you’ve been doing since I got back, Latham,” she said, all pretence dropped now. She was pissed, and if he wanted to have it out, she would let him.
“Listen, I know it’s hard for you to see me with someone else, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been using information against you.” His tone was so condescending, it took everything in Solveig to not punch him inthe face ... again. She should probably stop doing that—it was starting to become a habit.
“If you think I would hold that against you, or that I wouldn’t be happy for you, then you don’t know me at all. Trella has nothing to do with this, and you know it. This has everything to do with the promises we made to each other and the shady dealings you’ve had.”
“Excuse me? Shady dealings? How dare you accuse me of such a thing!”
“You’re going to sit here and tell me that removing all the females from their posts wasyouridea? Gerrie! You demotedGerrie,Latham!”
Latham swallowed hard but did not answer.
“So either you’re working with someone who has control over your decisions, or you have crawled so far up your own ass that you can’t tell which way is down. However, since I know the males who took over are in Maddock’s pocket, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that it wasn’t entirely your fault.”
“MY FAULT?!” Latham bellowed. “You think this is all MY fault?! I was backed into a corner because YOU were gone, Solveig. I had no other choice! We were bleeding and it was chaos. I had to make hard choices because you weren’t here!”
“I was captured, not on vacation, Latham!”
“I know you weren’t on vacation, Sol. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Don’t you dare. You may have been backed into a corner, but yes, this is your fault,” Solveig said quietly, voice shaking with rage.
“How the fuck was you letting yourself get capturedmyfault? I didn’t ask you to save me!”
“We have had this conversation already. You shouldn’t have been there in the first place, and you know it. You can sling accusations all you want, Latham, but the truth of the matter is that you broke our deal, leftyour post, interrupted a raid, and almost got yourself captured. And I saved you.”
“I didn’t ask you to save me.”
“You never had to ask.”
“You should’ve let them take me,” Latham whispered. That pulled Solveig up short. “I know it was supposed to be me. If it had been me, none of this would be happening.” He rubbed a hand down his face.
“I could never have let that happen. I loved you.” Pain flickered through his eyes. “We made a blood oath, and magic or not, it was just as binding to me. You let me go. And when I came back broken, I thought I would at least have you. Instead, you took everything from me.” Her voice cracked and tears shone in Latham’s eyes.
“I didn’t know what to do.”
“You mean you didn’t want to make the hard choices.”
