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"That's not-"

"You decided what I could handle."

"I decided what was reasonable to bring up during a week, when you were still learning where the towels were kept."

"That's not your decision to make."

"I know that."

"Do you?" She unwound the wrap she had just finished tying and tossed it onto the fence post before reaching for her jacket. Her movements had turned sharp and deliberate, the kind I had come to recognize whenever she decided a conversation was no longer worth the effort of staying calm.

"Every person who ever managed me told me the same thing. That they were protecting me. That certain things weren't urgent enough to raise, that I'd only worry, that I didn't need the full picture to function inside the smaller one they'd built for me. You just told me that with better manners."

"That is not what I meant."

"I don't care what you meant. I care what you did, and what you did was stand in the house for weeks deciding what I deserved to know."

"I was trying to protect you from something that isn't even real yet. There's no wedding. There's no date. It might never happen."

"Then that was your choice to make about your own life. Not your choice to make about what I get to understand about the man I live with or what people will say about me."

I reached for something to say that would undo the last three minutes and found the yard had gone very quiet around us, no birds yet, no wind, just the two of us and the sound of her jacket sleeve catching on the fence rail as she pulled it on too fast to bother with the zip.

"Jade."

"I need to shower before drills."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting right now."

She was already three steps toward the house before I found my voice again, and by then the only thing I managed to get out was her name a second time, quieter, uselessly, the way a person calls after someone already too far away to hear the difference in tone.

She didn't stop.

Ashter rose from his spot near the fence post, the way he moved when nothing around him had registered as a threat worth rushing for. He crossed the yard toward me first instead of following her immediately, and for one stupid, hopeful second I thought that meant something. He pressed his broad head against my hip, one short nudge, gone as quickly as it came, ember eyes tilted up at me for a beat that felt entirely too knowing for a creature who spent half his day stealing spoons and Alex’s socks.

Then he turned and padded after her, solid footfalls fading toward the house.

I stood alone in the yard with the sun fully up now and no memory of when exactly that had happened, running the last five minutes back through my head and finding the same wrong turn every time I reached it. I had walked out here to apologize for the way she'd found out. I had meant every word of that apology. Somewhere between the collar and the towels I had managed to prove her right about something far worse than an unwanted engagement, and I had done it while trying to tell her I was sorry.

I didn't understand, standing there, how a man could set out to fix one mistake and walk face first into committing the exact one he'd come to apologize for.

I understood it a great deal better an hour later, and by then it was too late to matter.

Chapter Seventeen: A Council Favorite

Jade

Training Hall Four held more people than I'd ever seen packed into it, and every single one of them seemed to already know something about me.

I felt it before I understood it. Eyes moving toward our corner of the staging line and away again a half second too fast. Two trainees near the observation rail stopped talking the moment Corian led us past. A woman in Garnet's dark green leaned toward her squad mates and murmured something behind her hand, and though I couldn't hear the words, I didn't need to.

Favorite.

I'd heard the word twice already that morning, both times spoken just loudly enough for me to catch it, though never directly to my face.

"Ignore it," Nykos said, close enough that only I'd catch it.