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He didn’t even glance my way, narrowed eyes examining the fae male on my bed in a silence that swelled to a roar in my ears. Outside, nymphs were chattering. Insects buzzed through the humid darkness. None of it broke the frozen impasse between these braided walls, this high-strung moment between lust and disaster. In the silvery light, Creon’s face could have been a statue’s, a perfectly sculpted sneer on his lips, his eyes cold as the deepest sea.

The memory of whooshing blades welled up in me without warning, of blood spattering on moss and fire roaring through Zera’s wood.

‘Tared,’ I hissed, more desperately now. ‘Please don’t—'

‘Get out,’ Tared said softly.

His voice didn’t rise. His hand didn’t so much as twitch in the direction of the sword on his back. But there was an iciness to his tone, like the cold and deadly undercurrents below a perfectly still body of water, and it got the hairs rising on the back of my neck even though those two words had not been aimed at me.

‘He’snotgetting out,’ I snapped.

Now Tared finally turned, eyes narrowing in unmistakable warning. ‘Em—’

‘He’s not going anywhere.’ My chest constricted, as if laced into a too-tight corset; the words spilled out without thought or reason.Mine, something inside me growled, on that knife-edged line between claiming and giving in – a choice I hadn't wanted to make yet made instinctively, driven by every promise I’d made.I’ll have your back.‘You are one who just came barging in! Not exactly your place to tell anyone to go anywhere, and—’

His arm closed around my shoulder before I could jerk away.

Night and silver blurred around me, and when the world returned to its own colours, we were standing in the empty forest outside, not a living soul to be seen or heard. Stars sparkled between the branches overhead. The night breeze brushed my cheeks. I wrenched myself out of Tared’s grip and took a step back, hurriedly gazing around – no huts or nymphs or anything else to be seen, nothing but the alf before me and rows and rows of dark trees.

My heart sped up to a dizzying rattle. ‘Where are we?’

‘Alone.’ His words were perfectly calm and jarringly unthreatening. ‘Away from Helenka’s spies. What—’

‘Take me back!’

‘Into his claws?’ His eyes narrowed in the dark. ‘Not until you we’ve had averygood word. What exactly is going on here, Em?’

I should have been more diplomatic, more defensive, more appreciative of his concern … But what did he think he was doing, for fuck’s sake, dragging me around like a child without a mind of her own? I bit out a laugh. ‘If you need me to explain to you what’s going on, the state of your love life is significantly worse than I thought.’

He didn’t bat an eye. ‘Em, what has he been doing to you?’

‘Nothing!’ I burst out, hushed voice cracking. ‘Nothing that I didn’t want him to do, at least!’

‘Hardly a defence,’ Tared said coldly, a hint of gritted teeth breaking through the unnatural calm of his façade for the first time. In the white and grey moonlight, his slender face was pale as snow. ‘He should knowsomuch better than to take advantage of—'

‘He did no such thing, for fuck’s sake!’

We glared at each other, breathing heavily, neither of us willing to back down. He was the first to avert his face, releasing a heavy groan as he did, visibly forcing himself to lower his shoulders. Two, three more seconds went by as he opened his mouth, looked for words, closed it again, and struggled a moment longer to compose himself.

Then, with flat, unnatural composure, he said, ‘I’m not sure how to put this, Em.’

I swallowed several more unpleasant retorts. ‘How to put what?’

‘Creon.’ He made a sharp gesture at the forest to his right, hesitating a last moment before he continued. ‘Look, he knows how to manipulate people, do you understand? He knows how to make himself likeable when he needs to be. I don’t blame you for feeling … hell,infatuated, if he’s been making an effort to—’

‘He hasnot.’

‘No, of course that is what he—'

‘Could you stop treating me like a gods-damnedchild, Tared?’ I was so very sick of this – of walking on eggshells every moment of the day, of having to defend my own damn choices at every bend in the road. ‘I can determine for myself how I feel about him, thank you very much, and—’

Something twitched at his temple. ‘Em.’

‘You’re doing exactly what you accused Agenor of doing!’ The words were speaking themselves now, weeks and weeks of unspoken frustration hurtling over my lips. ‘Don’t you see that? Telling a grown woman where to go, what to think, how to deal with—’

‘And what else am I supposed to do?’ he hissed, the shield of composure not so much breaking as wavering. ‘Would you prefer for me to observe this very real threat to your wellbeing and just leave you to deal with it yourself?’

‘He’s not a threat to me!’