Lys doesn’t answer as the woman glides between them, light on her feet. She pats his cheek, and then she’s gone, the door swinging shut in her wake. Alone, the silence bristles.
“That was rude of you,” notes Shea.
On a normal night, the casual condemnation of his character might amuse him. On a normal night, he might laugh. Tonight, he stares dead ahead, unsmiling. He looks as tired as she feels, his eyes bruised and his cheeks hollow, his hair a messy fall of black.
“You shouldn’t have come here.” His voice is tumbled stone. It scrapes clean through her.
“I needed to talk to you.”
He still hasn’t looked at her. “I didn’t send for you.”
“Well, that’s too bad. I’m not one of your lackeys, I’m your—”
She falters and he pounces, quick as a cat. “My what?”
“Never mind.”
“Don’t stop now,” he goads, fixing her in the full-black of his stare. “I’m dying to know what it is you were planning to say.”
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.” He stalks nearer, predatory in the gloom. “What are you, Shea? My iron supplier? My human blood bag? How many more ugly phrases can we think up to give this thing a name?”
“Youarein a bad mood.”
His smile is humorless. “What gave it away?”
He looks as waspish as she’s ever seen him, and she suddenly regrets coming at all. Everything feels different, now that the rules have changed. Like she and Lys have been stuffed into an airless box and then rattled. His agitation drones in the air between them—a palpable buzz that sets her blood humming.
“I wanted to talk to you about Turning, but clearly I came at a bad time.”
She manages to get the door partway open before he pushes it shut, his hand splayed against the grain. Pinned, she can smell the clean, cold scent of him. Smoke and pine, like the forest in deep winter. Without a fire, a chill has crept into the room. The knob is ice-cold beneath her palm.
“I’ve changed my mind,” he says. “Let’s talk.”
Pulse fluttering, she turns to face him. A half inch away, Lys is a study in shadow. Hunger threads along his throat in pale blue rivers. It takes her several heartbeats to gather her courage.
“I’ve thought it over, and I think I’m ready.”
“You think?” His voice is hard as glass. “Or you are?”
“I am.”
He contemplates her for a long moment. “Your toes are turned in.”
“What?”
“You go pigeon-toed when you lie.”
“I do not.”
“Do too.”
The careful way he’s studying her makes her cheeks heat. Her heart gives a single hard thump. He hears it, the hunger in his skin splitting into tributaries of dark. She resists the urge to reach out and trace the lines with a finger.
“You’re starving.”
He makes a face. “I’m always starving.”
