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End. The word echoed through my mind with the force of a reverberating hammer blow to an anvil. Was this anend, then?

‘I didn't realise I was hurting anyone by staying silent,’ I mumbled – all I had left to say to defend myself. ‘If someone hadtoldme—’

‘Oh, don't worry.’ She scoffed, shaking her silvery braids over her shoulders. ‘You're not the only one I'm blaming here. Which doesn't make this entire situation any less ridiculous. Now go pack your bags. I refuse to let your questionable judgement get in the way of the work we've got to do.’

I retreated to my hut, feeling impossibly more hopeless than when I’d stepped out of bed, Alyra darting after me like a feathery little chaperone.

You're not the only one I'm blaming.Was she talking about Lyn? About Naxi? Both of them could likely have told me how much pressure Tared was under, even if they didn’t want to spill my secrets to him themselves. But Naxi had her rules, forbidding her to spread information about the inner lives of others, and Lyn …

I threw a look over my shoulder, found Beyla bent over her notebook again, and changed course just before I reached my own little dome. Lyn slept in the structure farthest from the clearing. A risk, to go see her now – hell, if I was unlucky, I would find Tared waiting for me in her company – but there would be little time to talk once we had left for the Cobalt Court, and if I had to spend our entire journey guessing at her opinions, I might just go mad. A little delay in packing was the better alternative.

No sounds came from behind the thin wall of branches. That seemed a hopeful sign.

‘Lyn?’ I whispered, not daring to raise my voice.

Only silence answered me for a moment. Then, equally quietly and unnervingly numbly, she said, ‘Come in, Em.’

I ducked through the bead curtain. She had started packing, too; half-folded clothes and the occasional dagger covered the bed. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor herself, still wearing the same shirt and loose linen trousers she had worn yesterday, her red hair an unusual mess. The smile she forced at me was about as cheerful as a threatening thunderstorm.

‘Morning.’ A powerless gesture at the bed. ‘Sit down.’

Nudging a few shirts aside, I obliged.

Lyn grabbed a hairbrush from the floor, glared at it for a moment as if she could not quite remember why it was here in the first place, then shoved it firmly into her bag and turned to face me. With a grunt, she added, ‘Well.’

Out of nowhere, tears were stinging behind my eyes again.

‘Don't feel guilty, Em,’ she said, reading my expression with unnerving accuracy. Her voice was tired. ‘It's a miracle you managed to keep it hidden for so long. Sooner or later, it was bound to go wrong.’

‘Did you know?’ Not the words I had planned to speak, but the ones that forced themselves over my lips with no regard for my more diplomatic plans. ‘That Tared still thought Creon might try to run off with you at any moment?’

She groaned. ‘Strong suspicions. I told you we are extremely experienced at not talking about Creon when we can avoid it.’

‘Why didn't you tell me?’

She was quiet for a moment, fidgeting with a fuzzy red curl. Then, slowly, she said, ‘What would you have done with the knowledge?’

I frowned, taken aback. ‘I … I’m not sure? I suppose it would have seemed rather cruel to me to keep the secret if I’d known …’

‘Yes,’ she said flatly. ‘There are quite a lot of things that could be considered cruel to bonded alves, as a matter of fact.’

There was too much weight in that sentence, too much meaning in her gaze. Oh, hell. ‘I didn’t mean to sayyou’recruel for … you know.’

‘Not blindly shrugging off everything he’s ever messed up and just declaring my undying love to him already?’ she suggested wryly.

‘Well. Yes.’ I gave a helpless shrug. ‘Obviously you shouldn’t be forced to feel anything.’

‘No. There has to be a limit, hasn’t there?’ Her smile was too small for her face, a closely guarded expression so very different from her usual radiant warmth. ‘Look, this is his tragedy, Em. Our tragedy, possibly. I refuse to extend it beyond that – to make the responsibility of the rest of the world to do away with all personal preferences and accommodate a bond that shouldn’t have been there in the first place.’

A few more pieces of the puzzle fell into place. I swallowed and said, ‘I think Beyla might disagree with you on that.’

‘Oh,’ she said sourly, ‘Beyla is absolutely furious with me, of course.’

I blinked, the readiness and weary acceptance of that statement equally surprising. ‘Of course?’

‘She always is when these things come up,’ Lyn said with an unconvincing shrug. ‘Maintains that I should be more careful, that I don’t understand the utter torture of a broken bond, and so on and so forth. Which is true, of course – but then again, I maintain she doesn’t have the faintest idea what it’s like to unwillingly become the target of a bond, either. So it’s a bit of a stalemate.’

‘Unwillingly?’ The word sounded ominous. I tried to imagine Tared forcing a bond on any unwilling partner – calm, easy-going Tared, who would rather join a suicidal quest to a plague-stricken continent than infringe on my autonomy by stopping me – and failed even after last night’s reveal of brimming anger.