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I glared up at him, a counter barely leaving my lips before he planted his hand over my mouth like an iron clamp, his other hand at the back of my neck to keep me still. “Raise your voice like that in The Dark and I’ll be tempted to leave you inside.”

Anger heated me up to my ears as I glared at him. But I held his gaze firmly until he finally let go.

“You can be so wretched, sometimes.”

He simply crossed his arms and sighed, tilting his head the slightest bit. Unmoved in the face of my frustration.

And suddenly I felt embarrassed for my behavior. I shouldn’t have been insulting him at all. But he frustrated me beyond reason.

And then I yelped, not realizing Beric had thrown me over his shoulder until I was gripping the back of his shirt. “Put me down!” I commanded. When he didn’t, and I looked up to see we were walking away from The Dark instead of into it, my heart started pounding in my ears. “Wait, I’m sorry. I’ll go in without any more fuss, I promise. I want to be here.”

I heard the coach doors open and felt the slight movement in my stomach as he quickly sat me down on the edge.

“What are you doing?” I said, fixing my hair and skirt, my frustration building all over again at his silence. He leaned over me and grabbed something from inside the coach.

“Here,” he said, finally, unwrapping a cloth and holding it out to me.

I froze, blushing. It was a bundle of food—bread, cheese, sausage. And, to my horror, my stomach immediately started growling upon seeing them. I took them quickly.

“Thank you,” I mumbled, hoping it made up for all the strife I’d just put him through.

He sighed. “You didn’t eat breakfast, did you?” he said, as if he knew.

“I had an apple,” I protested, sheepishly. And then I occupied myself with the food so I wouldn’t have to embarrass myself further.

“Don’t rush,” he said, and I’m sure he was referring to the far too large bite I’d just taken. I blushed with mortification that he’d had to see such a thing, and made sure the next bite was more ladylike.

But he had already busied himself too much to notice anyway, checking on Ivy while I ate.

Anise came up and sat beside me slowly, hesitantly. I’d honestly forgotten she was here, or else I probably wouldn’t have behaved in such an awful fashion toward Beric. But where had she been? Not near the border of The Dark, with us.

“Is this how it is with you two all the time?” she asked, sounding more than a little disturbed.

My cheeks grew hot. “Only because I’ve been forced to lie to him,” I said.

“Even so, he should show some restraint. He’s only a squire, after all.”

I pretended to chew a little longer on my bite of bread so I wouldn’t have to speak. I didn’t know what to say, how to respond to that. He should show restraint, but I’d also been forced to be terribly unreasonable to him. And, as infuriating as he could be, it wasn’t as if he made me uncomfortable. Or that I disliked it when he touched me. And him handing me food, knowing my needs before I did, was one of the most romantic things that had ever happened to me.

But I could never admit that to Ann. To anyone. “He can be … aggressively persuasive sometimes.”

“He’s positively barbaric, Cali,” said Ann. It was the first time in her life she’d ever sounded a bit concerned for me. “Tell him you won’t tolerate it, and that you insist he take you home immediately.”

“Why?” I said, raising a brow at her. “Because you don’t want to go into The Dark?”

“You don’t want to either,” she accused. “No sane person would.”

“Well, until the duke proposes, it doesn’t matter how we feel about anything. We have to at least put on a show of working together.”

I stood and walked around the coach to see Beric patting Ivy, whispering sweet words to her. I felt almost embarrassed to interrupt him, after how foolishly I’d behaved.

I cleared my throat, and he looked at me—and for some reason, that in itself made me even more embarrassed than before.

“I think I’m ready now,” I said, to push past it.

“We have time, if you need it,” he replied, running his hand between his horse’s eyes.

“No, I’m all right. This is too important to dawdle.”