“I could have.”
“You didn’t.”
“No.”
“Why?”
He looked past me, over the roof, toward the dark shape of the west grounds.
“Because he brought a cloth.” Kieran laughed once, without humor. “I had another apple. Very symbolic. Very charming. Completely useless for cleaning up blood.”
“Kieran.”
“He had what you needed. He saw the blood and thought of the cloth.”
For once, he did not sound jealous because he wanted to win.
He sounded jealous because someone else had been kind in a way he had not known how to be.
That was much harder to defend against.
The apple sat between us on the stone.
Neither of us picked it up.
“Was that why you left it? So I’d know you came?”
His eyes lifted to mine.
“So you’d know I came.”
“I knew.”
Kieran’s breath quickened.
The Pull answered, quick and bright, and for a second the roof smelled like autumn and rain-wet stone.
He stood.
Too fast.
Pain crossed his face, sharp enough to break through whatever mask he had meant to wear. His right hand went halfway to his shoulder before he forced it down.
“Stop doing that,” I said.
“Standing?”
“Pretending I didn’t see.”
“You are inconveniently observant.”
I stepped closer.
“What’s wrong with your Mark?”
His gaze dropped to my mouth, then away.
It wasn’t flirtation this time. It was escape.
