I watched as he inhaled shakily, collecting himself again.
“What do you want from me, Callan?” I asked.
“Gone,” he said bitterly. “I want you gone. This is no longer your home.”
“It never was my home,” I said.
Something flickered in his eyes—hurt or history, I couldn’t tell. “If that is how you want it, then we’ll do it your way. If you are found inside Grey Oak’s borders again, I will treat you as the law would treat any foreign spy and have you executed.”
He moved then, not away from me, but toward, closing the space with that controlled grace he liked to pretend was gentleness. I suddenly realized why the room had felt so thick when I’d arrived. Callan was no longer dulling his power. The scent of vervain, his little trick for suppressing it, was long gone from where it had once clung to his skin.
His mouth twisted as he crowded me. “Where is she?”
“Alive.”
“Where,” he said again.
Over his shoulder, the rain scratched at the glass like a thing trying to get in.
I didn’t answer, wondering how long before he touched me. Before he compelled the truth from my tongue.
He took the last step. His fist came with it.
The first punch exploded brightly behind my eyes. The second forced me back a step. Pain rang clean and absolute, shuddering all the way to my still-tender hip. I did not give him a third.
His fist landed in my palm. For a moment, I did not yield it to him, and his eyes blazed with fury that I knew would never truly extinguish between us as long as we both lived.
He stepped back, yanking his hand with him, and I let him have it. Gingerly, I touched the new bruise blossoming on my cheekbone. The bastard had a stronger left hook than I imagined. Good for him.
“Are you finished?” I asked.
He turned away and braced both hands on the table. His right knuckles bloomed purple already.
“You had no right to take her from me,” he said.
“You were going to put her in chains.”
“I was going to keep her safe.” He lifted his head, anger scalding his grief clean. He pushed off the table’s edge, straightening. “The court is already saying she bewitched me. That she murdered him to make room for herself. That I—” He bit the word in half, and the room swallowed it.
“So tell them the truth.”
“Which truth is that, brother? Your betrayal? Hers?”
“About Duron. What he intended to do to her. What he should never have done to his own people.”
His gaze met mine—king and boy at once.
“Where is she?” he said, softer. Not a demand. A plea.
“Somewhere you will not follow.”
“You think there’s anywhere in this realm I won’t find her?”
“There are places even you can’t go,” I said. “Doors that will not open for even an Autumn king.”
He heldmy stare.
“You always told me she was wrong for me,” he said. “All this time—it was you who was wrong for her.”
