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She stopped with a cookie halfway to her mouth.

“Jax Jax? Solace Jax? Reina Jax?”

“In the Hollow Wood. On Wednesday.” My face was already heating. “In some leaves. There were rooks.”

Tamsin slowly lowered the cookie and stared at me with such delighted disbelief that I had to look away.

Then I lifted a third finger.

“And this morning, Ronan.”

“Ronan?” Her voice went so high that I winced. “The Archive Ronan? Mr. High-Collar? Mr. ‘the reading room closes at nine’? That Ronan?”

“Against the Heraldry section.”

Tamsin made an incoherent noise, fell backward across my bed, and lay staring at the ceiling with the cookie clutched to her chest.

“And,” I said, then stopped.

I looked down at my hand, where three fingers were still raised.

After a moment, I slowly lifted a fourth.

Tamsin sat upright.

“Kaelen Vance,” she said.

It wasn’t a question.

“He threw me away,” I said. “In front of everyone. He’s barely said ten words to me since the Glasshouse. The roses stopped coming, and every time he walks into a room, I still feel him here.” I pressed my palm against my breastbone. “I still…” The rest refused to come out. “And he’s promised to Delphine,” I added quickly. “Everyone keeps talking about the rejection as though that part doesn’t matter. Their fathers arranged the match before either of them could walk.”

Some of Tamsin’s amusement disappeared.

“That matters,” she said. “But being promised to someone isn’t the same thing as choosing them.”

“He hasn’t chosen me either.”

“No,” she said more gently. “And until he explains himself, you don’t owe him an excuse.”

I lowered my hand.

Looking at those four fingers brought back an old shame I knew too well. Daniel’s voice was tangled up in it, along with his mother’s and every girl who had ever thrown a name at me across a changing room.

“What kind of person does that make me?” I asked quietly. “There are four of them. Four. What kind of greedy, stupid person does that?” Tamsin opened her mouth, but I kept going. “I spent three years with one man who didn’t even like me very much, and I thought that was love. I thought you found one person, if you were lucky, and then you held on because that was what you were supposed to do. You were supposed to be grateful somebody had picked you.” My throat tightened. “Now there are four, and I don’t understand what’s happening to me. Part of me keeps waiting to find out it was all some horrible joke and everyone else knew except me.”

“Babe.” Tamsin put her cookie down. Her expression had gone completely serious. “Why choose?”

I stared at her.

“I mean it,” she said. “Why do you think you have to?”

“Because that’s what people do.”

“Human people, maybe. Human people where you came from.” She tucked one leg beneath herself. “You’re on an island full of shifters, Wren. Mate bonds are one thing, and love is another. People here don’t automatically assume that wanting one person means you can’t want somebody else.”

I frowned.

Tamsin gestured with the cookie packet.