“That’s not?—”
“It’s fine.” It wasn’t. Tess reached down beside the pallet and fished out the dropped bead and held it out on her palm like an offering.Here, take your pretty thing back, let’s pretend I never opened my mouth.“I’ll figure it out. I always do. I don’t need?—”
And there it was.
I don’t need.
She had said those exact words, in that exact tone, because needing was the trap. Needing was the thing that could be taken away and used against you, and so you learned to sayI don’t needbefore anyone could prove you did. And because she’d said it, she knew it meant the opposite.
She looked at Tess’s extended hand, and the tight-jawed pride of a woman getting ready to be disappointed by one more person, and she took a deep, steadying breath, and did the most terrifying thing she’d done in a long time.
“I’ll go,” she said.
Tess’s eyes flew to her face.
“What?”
“To the port. With you. We’ll talk to Baralt together.” Her heart was pounding and her hands were damp, but she kept her voice level. “You’re right. You need information, and he’s the best chance we’ve got to get it.”
“You don’t have to?—”
“No, I don’t,” she agreed. She picked up a bead of her own and rolled it across her palm, just to keep her hands busy while she made herself say it. “But I want to. Because you asked me, and because I don’t want you to go there alone. And…” She stopped,but she’d come this far, she might as well finish it. “And because I need to go. For myself. I need to know I can.”
“Oh,” Tess said softly, all of the anger gone. “That.”
Polly smiled a little.
“Yes. That. I’ve spent a year staying up here. Being careful. Staying where I felt safe. I needed to, for a while.” Njkall had stood between her and the whole world when she couldn’t stand up for herself, and it had been the thing that let her, eventually, learn to stand on her own. “Now I think I need to go.”
Tess searched her face for a long moment, and then nodded.
“When?” she asked.
“I’ll ask Njkall.”
“Is he back from the port?”
“I don’t know. If not, tomorrow morning.”
“And if he says no?”
She shook her head.
“He won’t.”
Njkall was already in their quarters when she returned, his white fur streaked with fresh snow, the ice crystals melting in his mane. She watched him shake it off, the long lines of his body shifting beneath the thick pelt, and her mind went briefly, helplessly, back to last night, to the heat of his mouth and the way he had answered her kiss with a hunger that had shaken them both.
Then she remembered why she was here and what she had to say, and her nerves woke back up, twisting in her belly.
He turned towards her with a small smile on his face, the kind that meant he was glad to see her, and she steeled herself to speak before he could get a word out first.
“I’m going to Port Eyeja,” she blurted out.
CHAPTER TEN
I’m going to Port Eyeja.
Polly’s words rang in Njkall’s ears as he stared at her. Then he took a step towards her. Very carefully. Very slowly. The way he did everything when the wrong motion might shatter something.
