His jaw worked. He had expected the word to land and produce compliance, and it had not, and he was deciding what to do with that. I watched him decide and kept my face pleasant and waited.
He said nothing else.
I finished what was on my plate and set my utensils down, lining them with the same precision the tower had used to set the table, and stood.
“Where are you going?”
Not a question. A demand with the afterthought of a question, as if he was trying to be kinder, and failing
I turned back toward him slowly. He stood with his arms still folded, gaze fixed on me, and I recognized the posture—the immovability of it, the expectation that the question itself would be sufficient to stop me.
“You’re a guest,” I said.
His eyes narrowed.
“You don’t make demands in my tower.” My voice stayed level. I had no interest in raising it. Raised voices were what Father used when he wanted to remind me the space between us could collapse without warning. I had learned to hold my ground in a lower register. “I’ll go where I choose.”
Thane’s breath shifted, a small, careful sound that might have been surprise.
Malric looked at me for a long moment with something moving behind his eyes that I didn’t entirely understand. Thenthe tower hummed beneath our feet, a subtle change in the vibration, and whatever he had been about to say didn’t come.
I turned toward the corridor.
The blanket caught under my foot on the second step.
The floor came up fast. I reached for the wall and my fingers found stone without purchase, my weight already pitching forward.
A hand closed around my arm.
The grip was immediate, unyielding, certain in the way his voice was certain—as if hesitation had not been a consideration. He pulled me back to vertical with an efficiency that spoke of physical strength and long practice, his other hand bracing at my waist, and for one suspended moment, I stood pressed against him with his breath warm in my hair and his scent enveloping me.
Sun-warmed stone and steel and that deep, grounded undercurrent.
Heat broke over me, low and sudden and sharp, my omega senses answering with an immediacy that bypassed every conscious objection I had. My fingers closed over his forearm without deciding to. My breath came quick.
His hand at my waist didn’t move for a moment too long.
I felt the stillness that moved through him, the tightening of the hand that held me. He was fighting the same biology that I was. His grip on my arm adjusted, not releasing, confirming something.
“You won’t get far if you can’t walk,” he said near my ear. Low, with an edge that was half contempt and half something that slid beneath my skin and refused to behave like contempt at all.
I turned in his hold and pulled my arm free.
My face was warm. I was angry at my face for being warm.
“Let go.”
He looked at me—dark, unreadable, the wall of his composure fully restored as if the moment before had not occurred—and stepped back. Hands dropping. Expression closing.
Thane had risen from his chair. He had not moved toward us, but his posture carried the tension of a man who had been deciding whether to move and had not yet stood down from that decision. His gaze dropped to Malric’s hands and then came back to my face with an expression I recognized from earlier—careful, reading the signals I was giving without asking me to perform clarity I didn’t have.
I gathered the blanket with both hands, pulling it clear of my feet, and turned to the stairs.
“Don’t follow me,” I said.
I heard Malric shift. Heard the soft scrape of Thane’s chair settling again as he lowered back into it.
I stopped in the doorway and looked back at both of them—at Thane with his patient attention and his storm-bright eyes, at Malric with his arms refolded and his jaw set and whatever he had felt in the moment before dismissed behind competence and control.
