A thin, awful panic began inside me and spread until I could hardly hear anything else. She was leaving me. I was going to be alone. The thought was so sharp and sudden that it stripped away my anger at once. I wanted to beg. I wanted to tell her I was sorry for every cruel word I had thrown at her because I had been too ashamed to say the truth. I wanted to promisethat I would be better, that I had already changed, that whatever monstrous thing she had learned about me was not all I was. But the words wouldn’t come.
“No,” I croaked.
Laurel’s face tightened as though that hurt her too, but she didn’t move toward me.
I knew I shouldn’t have to apologize for every part of my past forever. I knew one argument shouldn’t end everything. I knew she had come here already half convinced I was a monster and that nothing I said could have been enough while she was this angry.
But none of that mattered. I was willing to apologize for anything if it meant I could keep her.
“Goodbye, Baron,” she said.
She kissed me briefly on the cheek then she moved toward the door.
“They’ll see you.” My voice sharpened with panic. I had to stop her. I had to explain. One fight was not the end of the world. It was just one argument. If she stayed, we would make up. I would apologize. I would tell her everything. I could still fix it. She had to stay long enough for me to fix everything. “Laurel, please.”
“But I’m impulsive, remember?” she snapped.
She pulled her cloak hood down over her head, flung the door open, and screamed, “What’s that?”
Every head in the hall swiveled toward the direction she pointed. By the time the soldiers looked back, she had darted down a side corridor and vanished.
I stood in the doorway, unable to move.
Someone in the hall laughed and made a crude remark about the sheriff’s lady friend fleeing before dawn. Another soldier asked if I needed them to chase her down. I turned my headslowly, and whatever they saw on my face made the laughter die at once.
“Leave her,” I said.
My voice was quiet, but every man there obeyed. I stepped back into my room and shut the door. The latch clicked into place with a tiny sound that felt horribly final.
For several moments, I stood where she had left me. Water still dampened the front of my shirt, the reports waited on the desk, and the hourglass kept dropping sand. Somewhere down the hall, the soldiers returned to their dice, their muttering, and their ordinary lives.
Mine had just split apart.
I looked at the bed where she had been sitting only moments earlier, at the water skin lying crooked on the table, at the door she had walked through without looking back. The room seemed emptier than it had before she’d been there, though nothing had changed except that now I knew exactly what I had lost.
She was gone.
And she had taken many of my hopes and dreams with her.
LAUREL
That arrogant, condescending blockhead.
How had I been so deluded as to think I ever loved him? He was controlling and critical and so determined to be right about everything and he did it all without an ounce of emotion. He had just stood there acting as though I was the problem for being reckless and foolish and he didn’t have any blame to share.
I wasn’t going to cave. I wouldn’t become one of the weepy, miserable girls who needed a man no matter what.
I stomped back to the servants’ sleeping quarters, my cloak snapping around my legs with each furious step. No one followed me or shouted after me. No one recognized me at all.
See, Baron?I thought bitterly.I know what I’m doing. No one caught me.
Impulsive, indeed.
I would show him. I would find a way to get all the information we needed without his help. I didn’t need him. I didn’t need his warnings, his careful plans, or his constant insistence that I should stop and think.
I didn’t need anyone.
By the time I reached my straw tick, my anger had settled into something hot and tight in my chest. I didn’t even bother to undress or put on one of the ludicrous nightgowns the servant girls always wore. I threw myself down fully clothed and stared into the darkness above me, fighting back the hot tears prickling at the backs of my eyes.
