I pressed my hand against my sternum and felt them, one and then the other, and thought about what Malric’s face had looked like in that last moment before he turned away.
Almost, I thought.
Whatever he was afraid of, it had almost lost.
Thane
Ifound him where I expected to.
The library, third floor, standing at the window with his back to the room and his hands clasped behind him. The posture he used when he was thinking hard enough that he needed to look at something that wasn’t going to look back. Outside the glass, the trees were dark shapes against a darker sky, and Malric was watching them with the focused stillness of a man conducting an argument with himself.
I closed the door behind me.
“Don’t,” he said, without turning around.
“I haven’t said anything yet.”
“You’re about to say something I don’t want to hear.”
I crossed the room, dropped into the chair nearest the cold fireplace and stretched my legs out before I looked at the back of his head. I was tired. The kind of tired that lived in the bone, the residue of hours of holding someone through something that had taken everything I had to give without taking what I’d wanted to. I was also frustrated.
“We’re here for a reason,” I said.
“I’m aware of why we’re here.”
“Are you?” I watched his shoulders. “Because from where I’m standing, you just sat in a bath with a woman we’ve both now seen fall apart, a woman who asked you a direct question and deserved a direct answer, and you gave her nothing.”
His shoulders didn’t move. “I gave her space.”
“You gave her silence and called it consideration.” I leaned forward, forearms on my knees. “She’s not a tactical problem, Malric. She’s not something to manage while you work out the optimal response.”
He turned from the window then. His face was composed, which meant the opposite of what it would have meant on anyone else.
“You’re awfully quick,” he said, “to remake everything for an omega you met three days ago. Particularly given that a few days ago you accused me of doing exactly that.”
The words cut like a sword. He’d meant them to.
I sat with it for a moment, because that was the honest thing to do. He wasn’t wrong about what I’d said. I had accused him of pulling away, of growing cold, of choosing the rebellion over us so many times there was barely an us left to choose. I had said it in the middle of a fight in the dark, three nights before we’d ever found this tower, and I had meant it.
“I remember what I said,” I told him.
“Then you understand why I’m cautious about your sudden certainty.”
“I’m not walking away from you.” I held his gaze. “That’s the difference. I’m not replacing anything or leaving anything behind. I’m making room.” I paused. “There’s enough room. You know there is.”
Something crossed his face and was immediately filed away.
He moved to the table and picked up one of the maps he’d left there, looked at it without seeing it, and set it back down. A Malric displacement behavior—touching objects when he needed a moment to think, without appearing to need a moment to think. I’d cataloged all of them over the years. He had more than he realized.
“We came here for a weapon,” he said.
“I know.”
“The rebellion is running out of time. We have maybe two months before the king’s eastern coalition consolidates and we lose the window entirely.” He pressed two fingers to the map. “We need what we came for.”
“I know that too.”
“Then you understand that I can’t afford to?—”
