“Ander, I need to talk to you.”
Ander and Cara traded a look.
“Should I stay?” she asked as she looked between us, and I wasn’t sure whose permission she requested.
Probably not mine, though.
“If you wish.”
I left the door behind me open for Tesa. I wasn’t going along with Shadowbane’s display of jealousy ploy. But I had taken Cara’s advice, and she should know that.
I had planned this conversation during the walk.
I had not planned for Ander’s gaze to move toward the door, toward the dark stretch of corridor visible through the gap I hadn’t fully closed, toward the shadow that wasn’t quite right.
He was on his feet before I processed that he’d moved. He yanked her hooded body into the light.
The knife was at her throat in the same motion, his arm across her chest, blade against her skin, with the deadly speed of a man who had kept his clan alive for years.
“Ander, stop!” I could already see Ander killing Tesa, finding only when she crumpled to his feet that he had been the one to cause his own grief. His knife hesitated, giving me enough time to blurt out, “Tesa is alive!”
She had raised her mask and hood to blend into the shadows. It was only her eyes on his that might’ve warned him.
The knife didn’t move.
Neither did she.
“No.” He might have been carved from stone.
“She is, I promise you.” I had known he would refuse to accept hope without proof.
She was looking at him. At his face. Then she blinked, and her eyes were full of tears.
He stepped back abruptly, the knife still held at the ready. He looked at her the way a man looked at something he did not trust himself to believe.
“Tesa.” He barely voiced her name.
Cara’s hand found my arm in the dark. She was not looking at me, she was looking at them, but her hand found my arm and stayed there, and I let it.
“Are you sure this is not a trick, Fear?” He didn’t look away from her when he asked.
“I’m sure,” I said, and for all he would have claimed my word counted for nothing to him, he nodded.
She crossed the rest of the distance, and he caught her with his hands at her shoulders.
Ander’s hand touched her hood. “May I?”
When she nodded, he gently pushed back her hood, revealing her dark hair. His fingers traced gently down her cheek until he could hook a finger under her mask and pull it away.
“Tesa,” he said again, that one name brimming with emotion.
It was our own quarters, but they needed their privacy. Cara still had my arm. “Take a walk with me, wife?”
Hurt flashed through her eyes. But why? Her grip slackened.
I put my hand over hers to hold it to my arm. Even though her eyes were still etched with feeling, she nodded.
It was only when we were in the hallway that I understood she thought I was mocking her when I called her wife.
