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I hated the tension between us more than I hated the crowd. Jade's mind stayed the same unreachable quiet it always was, but the silence didn't feel restful anymore while she used it to pull away. I wanted to know whether Silvaria's comment had hurt because Jade thought she was causing trouble in Corian's life, because she hated being the last person to know something everyone else already understood, or for a reason I wasn't ready to examine too closely myself.

I moved up beside her and matched her pace instead of asking any of it out loud. She didn't look over, though her shoulder loosened after a few steps and the space between us narrowed until our sleeves brushed.

"Is she always like that?" Jade asked, as the Citadel road rose ahead of us.

"No," I said. "She's usually worse."

A breath of laughter escaped before she caught it. It didn't fix the afternoon, but it eased something in my chest that had gone tight at the tavern table.

I'd started seeking Jade out because her silence gave me somewhere to rest. Somewhere between morning tea, a coin crystal, and watching her choose a collar for herself instead of having it chosen for her, I'd started seeking Jade instead of just the absence of everyone else.

A small parcel sat folded in my coat pocket the whole walk home, waiting for a day quiet enough to give it to her properly.

Chapter Fifteen: Stay Close

Jade

I knew it wasn't fair but knowing that didn't change the way I was feeling and it was annoying me.

I sat at the breakfast table with my hands wrapped around a cup I hadn't drunk from and let the silence wrap around me. Alex tried twice to pull me into whatever nonsense he and Halver were arguing about. Both times I gave him one word and let it die there. The second time he glanced at Halver, some silent question passing between them that I chose not to interpret, and he didn't try a third time.

Nykos didn't try at all, which was somehow worse, because it meant he'd already read enough off my face to know better. He poured his tea, drank it too fast the way he always did when a room felt crowded, and left his usual chair beside mine half a foot further away than it needed to be. Small courtesy. I noticed it and resented that I noticed it, resented further that the resentment had nowhere useful to go.

Corian read through a report at the head of the table, one page at a time, not looking up except when the silence stretched long enough to become its own kind of statement. He'd been the one to bring the collar out yesterday. He'd been the one Silvaria had aimed the worst of it at. If anyone in this house had earned the right to be short with someone this morning, it should have been him, and instead he sat there being reasonable in that quiet, controlled way that made me want to throw something.

Barely a month. That was all it had been since I'd walked through that gate with a file and one bag of clothing. A month wasn't long enough to earn the right to feel the way I felt this morning. It just made it harder to justify, which made it worse.

It wasn't about Corian's fiancée. I told myself that with enough conviction that I almost believed it. Some woman I'd never met, probably raised on the same diet of expectation and good posture. I didn't care about her existence. I pictured her anyway, thin-lipped and perfectly composed, the kind of woman who'd know exactly which fork to use and exactly how to make someone feel small without raising her voice, and hated her a little on principle before reminding myself I had no actual reason to.

That wasn't the problem either.

The problem sat lower than that, somewhere underneath the part of me that wanted to be reasonable about it. Silvaria hadn't told me anything I needed. She'd told me something I didn't have, and the difference between those two things had kept me awake half the night.

They knew things about me, most of my secrets, my life. They'd learned it by a file. I hadn't handed any of it over.

I knew almost nothing about them in return. Not the real things. Not fiancées and family names. I knew Corian was composed and fair and shielded people for a living. I knew Nykos drank his tea too hot and hated crowds. I knew Alex talked to fill silences that made other people uncomfortable and Halver cooked like it was the only language he trusted completely.

None of that was the same as knowing them.

I pushed my chair back before anyone could try again.

"I'm going out."

Corian looked up from whatever he'd been reading. "Where?"

"Out."

He opened his mouth like he meant to follow that with something, and I was already moving toward the door before he finished deciding what. Ashter uncurled from beside my chair and fell into step at my heel, his ridge rising when Corian pushed his own chair back.

The sound that came out of Ashter wasn't loud. It didn't need to be.

Corian sat back down.

I didn't look to see his reaction.

The path toward Gledhi Forest ran behind the house, past the training yard and the low stone wall that marked where our land gave up pretending it had a boundary. I'd walked it enough times by now that my feet found it without help, and I was three trees deep into the treeline before a shape fell into step beside me that wasn't smoke.

Halver didn't say anything at first. He rarely did.