Page 76 of Fierce Highland Magic

"And you did it anyway."

"Yes." The word hung between us.

I should have explained. I should have run the numbers for him, shown him the math that didn't balance, demonstrated in clear and careful terms why his method was killing him and mine was the only option that left anyone standing.

I did not explain.

"You were one help away from bindable," I said instead. "The Keeper told me. One more invocation and the market could have taken you the way it takes goods. Bottled you. Shelved you. Made you into something for sale."

"I know what bindable means."

"Then you know I couldn't watch."

His fists loosened. Not all the way. Just enough that the blood was returning to his knuckles, the tension releasing by degrees into something that was still anger but was also something else.

"You couldn't watch," he repeated.

"No."

"So you decided to walk unshielded into a market that bills desire, without protection, without standing, without anyone to—"

"Yes."

"—to intervene on your behalf, and you did this because you couldn't watch me spend myself?"

"Yes."

"That is not a strategy."

"No. It isn't."

The admission cost me something. I did not have a name for what.

Rowan's face did something complicated. The fury was still there. The hard line of his jaw, the tension in his shoulders, the way he held himself as if bracing for a blow that had already landed.

"You refused it," he said.

The words came out strange. As if he were testing them against something, measuring their weight.

"Tonight I refuse the bill."

The sentence left me before I could hedge it. No seventy-thirty. No on balance. No there's a case for.

Just the words, flat and final, landing in the space between us like a door closing.

Rowan didn't respond. The silence stretched.

The market's noise filled it—music from somewhere distant, the low hum of vendors and customers and transactions that had nothing to do with us. A bell rang, thin and far away, and I counted it automatically. Ten. The night was shortening.

It did not vanish. But it changed.

The hard edge of it redirected—away from the moment, away from me, toward something larger. The market. The architecture. The whole structure that made people pay for helping each other.

His hands uncurled entirely. "The passage is still open," he said. His voice had flattened. Just present.

"Yes."

"You should use it."