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“Of course you don’t,” Kalcedon said. There was an agitated look on his face as he folded his arms. “You’re so heartless that when I kissed you, all you wanted to do was turn into a bird.”

“That’s not…” I frowned, and poked at my food. I had my own excuses. “Magic is intoxicating.”

“Fae aren’t heartless, Meda.” His voice was cold, and I could feel his power thrumming with annoyance. “I have a heart.”

“If you say so,” I muttered, trying not to be caught up in his sway. He was just afraid of losing me, I told myself sternly—that was all. He didn’t want to be alone. It didn’t mean he cared who was at his side. If he did, he wouldn't choose me.

“Your precious Tarelay built a whole damned Ward to keep a woman safe. How can you, of all people, think fae are heartless?”

“Possession isn’t love.”

“Possession? He did the opposite! He gave her up forever to protect her. That’s love.”

“It isn’t,” I insisted. “If it were love, he couldn’t live without her. All he wanted was to keep the Sorrowing Lord from having her. He just cared who owned her, that was all.”

“Unbelievable,” Kalcedon muttered. He glared at me, his food still untouched, his arms still tightly crossed. I took another bite.

“If the fae weren’t heartless, we wouldn’t have so many stories about it,” I told him around my food. For a moment that seemed to shut him up, until Kalcedon spoke again, his words like ice.

“A handful of ancient stories, and you think you know everything.”

“It’s not just old stories. What about your father?”

Kalcedon’s mouth tightened. “You don’t know anything about that.”

“Eu… she told me about it. She said your mother risked her life, escaping the outlands, since if you’d been any better-formed inside her, you both would have died from the Ward’s drain on you.”

I had never mentioned Kalcedon’s birth mother in front of him. Nor had he brought her up.

Now I offered Kalcedon his own story as evidence: the terrified human woman, willing to abandon her whole world and risk her life to escape his father’s clutches. The mother who, on birthing and weaning a half-fae son, handed him into the safekeeping of the seer and walked away.

His father was fae. His father was terrible. I didn’t know what more proof Kalcedon needed.

“That wasn’t her story to tell.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes. His voice, normally so full of anger, sounded hollow. His shoulders caved slightly.

“But it’s true, isn’t it?”

Silence. Kalcedon started to shake his head no, then lifted it instead, his dark eyes boring into mine.

“Cruelty and domination are not fae sport, Meda. Or aren’t the Colynes human? Anyone can give in to evil. We’re just more capable than mortals, that’s all.”

“You said ‘we.’”

“You seem determined to treat me as something different from you,” Kalcedon growled. “Why fucking fight it?” He tossed my journal back across the table and picked up his food. “I’ll eat in the room, and spare you my heartlessness.”

I watched him go, then slowly opened up my journal with a frown. I hadn’t expected Kalcedon to react so poorly. He couldn’t be surprised I thought it, when everyone else in the world did, too. But I found myself questioning, really questioning, what he was capable of.

He’d cried for Eudoria. He’d treated me with a certain tenderness, too. And he was half human.

It occurred to me, uneasily, lurchingly, he might actually be hurt, not simply acting it. That I might have hurt him. In my exhaustion my tired eyes started to swim, vision blurring as tears rose up in me. I knew what it felt like to be treated as someone off, different, odd. And I didn’t want to hurt Kalcedon. I just hadn’t realized he could be hurt. And if he could be… if Kalcedon had a heart…

How long and lonely a life, for a monster stuck in a tower.

“Mistress,” a woman hissed. I wiped at my eyes and looked up from the tangle of written sigils in front of me. A young man stood on the other side of the table; two women stood just to my left. Hurriedly they all sat. The nearest woman, thin, pale, and honey-haired, placed a hand on my shoulder and peered wide-eyed at me.

“What?” I uncomfortably shrugged off the touch.

“That faerie,” she whispered urgently. “Has he been hurting you? Forcing you to…”