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While Rowan keeps staring out over the city beyond the glass, I set the glasses down on the bar and walk back over, handing one to him.

He eyes the amber liquid suspiciously. “What is this?”

“Scotch. One of my aunts owns the distillery.”

His eyes narrow. “I told you I don’t drink.”

I lean against the edge of the desk and watch him over the rim of my own glass. He looks fucking gorgeous like this. Flushed and annoyed and so pretty.

“Yeah?” I tilt my glass toward him. “Tonight you drink it.”

Rowan snatches the glass from my hand with an irritated, “Fine.” Then he looks back out over the city again. “So what exactly did you drag me up here to show me?”

I take a drink. “Tolian looks better from this side of the cliffs.”

Rowan glances back at me flatly, clearly not buying a second of that bullshit.

Good.

Because after tonight, I’m done letting him hide behind silence.

I want answers from him and I want them fucking now.

“You were terrified tonight.”

His fingers tighten around the glass. “I told you. I panicked.”

I lean one hip against the window's edge beside him and study his profile. “I dropped you off after our date. I kissed you goodnight long enough that I figured you’d spend the rest of the night hard and thinking about my mouth.”

Rowan’s face flushes, his mouth parting like he’s about to throw an insult at me before he seems to think better of it.

“Instead I get a call from you half out of your mind because somebody’s chasing you through Caervast.” I cock my head. “So what are you not telling me, little mouse?”

Rowan rubs a hand across his mouth. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“No?”

“No. So I went to the practice rooms. I played for a while. Then when I went back, I heard footsteps.”

Rain taps against the glass while thunder rolls through the cliffs beneath Tolian, flashes of lightning turning the windows white and dark again.

Rowan still stares out over the lights below us, but now and then I catch his reflection in the glass looking back at mine instead.

His large eyes. The soft line of his mouth. The way his throat moves when he swallows.

I want to kiss him again, want that stubborn mouth to finally give way beneath mine while the storm breaks outside and the rest of the world disappears behind the sound of his breathing.

“You’ve thought someone was following you before.”

He scoffs. “Why would you say that?”

“Because tonight wasn’t the first time you looked over your shoulder, was it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, you do. You were in the library at midnight weeks ago. Alone. And when I messaged you afterward, telling you that you shouldn’t wander at night, you never asked how I knew. Why didn’t you ask me? Scared I’d say it wasn’t me following you?”

Rowan pivots his head toward me, lightning flashing white against the windows behind him while something crosses his face too fast to read. “Weren’t you? Who says it’s not you lurking in the shadows? You sure seem to know everything about my whereabouts.”