Page 103 of The Witch They Fear

I look at him. I look at him for a long time before I answer.

"Nothing's stopping you," I say. "I just don't think you would."

His head turns. His eyes find mine. The blue is very dark.

"Why?"

"Because of this."

I lift my left hand between us. I don't touch him. I just hold it there in the air, palm open. Whatever this is. Whatever it is between him and me that pulled my head around when he stepped under a tree fifty feet away and put his hand on my back before I could fall and let me sit here and cry about my sister without saying don't cry. I'm not going to name it. I don't have a name for it. But it's there. And I'm betting he can feel it as clearly as I can.

His face changes.

For half a second something cracks in his face. Half a second, less. The careful goes.

Hunger. Grief. Something that almost looks like hope, that he kills before it can finish forming.

Then it's gone. The careful slides back over it, smooth as glass.

He pulls back.

He gets to his feet.

"Don't do that," he says.

"Kage—"

"Don't do that, Hex." He's not looking at me now. He's looking at the dark between the trees. His hands are back in his pockets. "Don't put a name on it. Don't decide what I would and wouldn't do for you. You don't know me. Whatever you think you know about me, you're wrong."

"Kage."

"You're an idiot to trust me. You hear me? A fucking idiot to think I won't hurt you. I'm a predator, Witch. I'm the thing this whole party is built to remind you exists. And one day—when whatever it is between us inconveniences whoever it inconveniences, when the man who owns me snaps his fingers and points me at you—I'm going to hurt you. And you're going to look at me and remember this conversation. And you're going to wish you had stayed at the fire."

"Kage—"

"Calypso!"

Nellie's voice. Two trees over. Searching.

I turn my head to see where she’s at.

When I turn back he's gone.

The shadow under the elm is empty. There's no sound of footsteps. There's no movement in the underbrush. There's just me sitting on wet grass with my back against a tree and a breath of wind coming up through the gap in the trunks, and Nellie's voice calling my name a second time, closer now.

"Cal? Cal, where are you?"

I push off the tree. I stand. My shoulder twinges. The night blurs at the edges for a moment and resettles.

"Here," I call back. "I'm here, Nell. I'm coming."

I lift my left hand to my cheek. There's a tear there I didn't notice falling. I wipe it on the back of my wrist before I step out from under the elm, and by the time Nellie's eyes find me I am exactly the version of myself she came looking for.

Chapter 17

Combat class is the worst place to think.

I'm sitting on the low stone wall at the south end of the training field, sling off but my arm still cradled in the elastic compression sleeve the infirmary sent me home with, my legs crossed at the ankle, my hair scraped back into the lowest ponytail my left hand could manage on its own. Midus is forty feet away running paired sparring drills in the grass, and every fifteen seconds he glances at me on the wall like the sight of me sitting still personally offends him.