Page 136

By the time she moved onto the weighted bag work my legs had gone stiff from standing in one place too long, and I still hadn't said a single word. Twice I opened my mouth. Twice I closed it again, because every version I built in my head started with an explanation and she had never once asked me for one.

She threw the last combination hard enough that the bag swung on its chain and didn't come back to center before she caught it flat-palmed and held it still.

Then she straightened, breathing hard, and looked at me for the first time since I'd arrived.

"You've been standing there an hour."

"Closer to fifty minutes."

"Say what you need to say, or go."

No heat in it, just flat. Just the flat certainty of someone who had already decided the conversation would happen on her terms or not happen at all. I had commanded soldiers twice her size who gave me less room to argue than that single sentence did.

"About the tavern."

"I know what it's about."

"Then you know I owe you an explanation."

She reached for the water skin hanging off the fence post and drank without looking at me, throat working, giving herself the space of three long swallows before she answered.

"You don't owe me anything."

"Jade."

"I mean it." She capped the skin and set it down harder than it needed. "You're engaged. That's yours. It has nothing to do with me."

The words came out clean, no crack in them anywhere, yet they still seemed wrong.

"It has something to do with you finding out from her, in front of half the tavern, instead of from any of us."

"I didn't need it delivered gently. I needed it to not be a surprise."

"That's fair."

"Then we're done."

She turned back toward the bag, reaching for the wraps on her knuckles, and I understood if I let her again the conversation would end here, both of us pretending we'd finished something we hadn't.

"My father arranged it while I was in Basic," I said, before she could get her hands wrapped. "Two families, one contract, neither of us in the room when it was signed. I've delayed the date for nine years. I intend to keep delaying it."

Her hands went still on the wrap.

"Why are you telling me. It’s not my business."

"Because you shouldn't have had to piece it together from Silvaria."

"I didn't piece anything together. She told me. Very efficiently."

"She told you the fact. Not the rest of it."

"I don't need the rest of it."

"You might, if you're going to keep living under the same roof as a man most people thinks has already promised himself to someone else."

That landed somewhere it wasn't supposed to. I saw it cross her face and vanish, quick enough that a person who hadn't spent weeks learning to read the small movements under her stillness might have missed it entirely. I hated myself a little for noticing, given everything else I was supposed to be saying right now.

"That's your reputation to manage," she said. "Not mine."