I clenched my eyes shut against her plea, desperate to explain without crying. Edith was my home. My family. It felt wrong to fight with her like this.
But Iwantedthat boon.
The key to my memories. The key to who I was.
“I can do this. I have to.”
“We can go back to the hut and rebuild and—”
“No,” I said again, and this time my voice was firm. Something roared beneath it, making the fire burn brighter, the lamps flare. “I will do this.”
Silence loomed heavy between us.
“I can’t watch this. I won’t,” she breathed, her voice wrought with fear.
She stood from the couch and left for her own chambers, huffing a final breath.
The door closing behind her felt like a strike between my ribs to the exposed center of my heart.
18
A sharp pounding rattled my door, dragging me from a restless sleep.
I jerked upright, heart hammering, disoriented for half a second. It was still dark outside, I realized, groaning.
Sleep had evaded me most of the night. I tossed and turned over my fight with Edith, worrying over her—over my selfishness. She wasn’t wrong; I wasn’t prepared for this. But I was desperate for those memories, more than I think she’d realized before last night.
The pounding came again.
“Rubi,” a voice barked. The Ambush Master himself.
Training.Right.
I exhaled through my nose and swung my legs over the side of the bed. Barefoot, I padded across the floor and wrenched the door open. “It’s too early for this.”
Blake stood in the doorway, shoulders squared like he wasbracing for a fight. Shadows were smudged beneath his eyes, and I delighted slightly in the fact he hadn’t slept well either.
He was dressed in a training uniform of black and silver that molded to his broad frame, the tunic made of soft, reinforced black fabric, designed for movement but tough enough to withstand strikes. Over that, he wore a leather jacket with silver embroidery tracing the seams, forming the crest of the dominion’s tyger on his sleeves. A tyger fang was pinned to the front—the symbol of his authority.
The Ambush Master.
His black leather training trousers were tucked into knee-high boots, their sturdy soles silent on the stone floor as he tapped a foot impatiently.
I met his gaze and crossed my arms as I stood in the doorway. Blake’s eyes flicked over me, then lingered, taking in the line of my throat, the dip of my collarbone, before his expression shuttered.
I was barely dressed in the worn tunic I’d slept in. It left far too much of my legs bare.
A tinge of pink etched across his cheeks as he cleared his throat. His voice was gruff. “You cannot answer the door dressed like that. It could have been one of the guards. You need a maid. And a nightgown that goes to your ankles instead of a tunic the size of a handkerchief that barely covers your—”
“What do you want?” I cut him off.
His nostrils flared. “I swear I—”
Cutting himself off, he exhaled hard and rubbed his temples.
“I’m not doing this,” he muttered, before shoving a pile of cloth and leather into my arms. “Get dressed.”
“But I—”
