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“Suit yourself.” He brushed past her on his way to the desk, where he carefully placed the brown bag.

This was not her parents’ rage. She hadn’t known that it was possible for someone to move quietly while being angry, for someone to be mad at another person while still caring about whether they’d eaten.

Oskar noticed the letter and picked it up.

Guinevere was seized by the urge to snatch it from him and rip it into a million pieces, but she made herself stay where she was, watching him read it from out of the corner of her eye, her pulse hammering a mile a minute.

His sharp oakmoss features remained completely impassive; there wasn’t even the slightest furrowing of his brow.

There was no clue at all as to what he was thinking.

Not that she needed any clues. It was fairly obvious that he was disgusted with her. Who wouldn’t be? He got to the end and lowered the parchment slightly, frowning—not at what she’d written, Guinevere realized, but at the damp spots that her tears had left.

Then he looked at her and she waited for him to send her away. To banish her from his life for good.

Oskar chucked the letter into the fire.

Guinevere’s mouth dropped open as the flames surged to consume their newest bit of kindling. “What—”

“I already know about your magic.” They were the last words she had ever expected to hear.

“I saw you, that night. I heard the commotion from my campsite, and I went to investigate, and I got there as the bandits were dragging you out of the wagon. You handled them before I could intervene.” His gaze turned contemplative.

“I’d never seen anything like it before.

The wildfire spirit—Teinidh, was it?—flowing out of you.

Turning all those evil men to ash in a blink. Terrible and beautiful, all at once.”

“You…you knew.” Gracious, what was wrong with her?

He’d already said that. But her brain couldn’t come to terms with it.

She had to repeat it, in her own voice, with the movements of her own lips and tongue, before she could accept a reality so different from what she had convinced herself would transpire.

No shock, no horror, no revulsion. Just Oskar, calm and steady in the twilight.

“You knew all this time. And you never—never said anything—”

He shrugged. “I assumed that, if someone as talkative as you wanted to discuss it, you would have. I had no right to pry.”

“I’m not that talkative.”

“Beg to differ.”

“You knew,” she said again. She still couldn’t believe it.

How she’d braced for the worst, how it hadn’t come to pass.

How the scars of her childhood seemed to…

not fade, exactly, but soften, their ugliness melting into the background of her being, remaining a part of her but no longer the long shadow over her life.

“And you helped me and accompanied me on my travels anyway. It doesn’t bother you at all ?

I ended those men’s lives, Oskar. Just like—like that—” She made an abrupt motion with one quivering hand.

“Nobody should be able to do that. Or, at the very least, they should be able to control it. But I can’t, and you’re not afraid of me in the slightest? ”

He arched a brow. “Do you want me to be afraid of you?”

“No.” Her bottom lip wobbled. “I want you to—to l-like me.”

In an instant he was closing the distance between them and wrapping her up in his strong arms. She made a strangled noise as she hid her face in his shirtfront, allowing herself to tremble, trusting him to hold her together.

“I like you just fine, Gwen.” Oskar sounded vaguely amused, but his hand on the back of her head was comforting.

“How could I not? One of the things I remember most about that night is that you could have run after you set the fire. Saving yourself could have been your priority. But no—you freed the oxen first. You made sure they could get away. How can I be afraid of someone with a heart that good?” His tone hardened ever so slightly with his next words.

“I forbid you to feel any guilt over killing those bandits. They would have hurt you. You did what you had to do to survive. It wasn’t your fault. ”

“I’m starting to understand that some things aren’t,” Guinevere mumbled. And this, too, felt like defiance. “But there is always this voice in the back of my head. It drowns out even Teinidh. It belongs to Mother and Father. And it blames me for—for most of what goes wrong, because—”

Because you are a monster.

Because those curtains were genuine Marquesian lace and you burned them! What did I ever do to deserve such a child?

Because your freakish nature will be the downfall of this family.

Because it would have been better if she had died!

“Because,” said Oskar in the here and now, “you have bad parents.”

Guinevere stiffened. She would have struggled free of him, but he held her fast. The simple statement, so bluntly given, sank in.

Once she got over her initial burst of indignation, it was almost a relief that someone in this world mirrored her darker thoughts and had no compunctions saying them out loud.

Yet it was also that same relief—the flicker of disloyalty inherent to it—that caused an unexpected flare of temper.

“So what if they’re bad parents? They’re all I have.

” Guinevere managed to push Oskar away just then, or maybe it was surprise that caused him to release her.

“What good does your judgment do when, of the two of us, I shall be the one left with it? Because you”— will head for Boroftkrah after dropping me off at Nicodranas, and we will never see each other again —“are too busy trysting to consider my feelings!”

Oskar blinked. “Trysting?”

“With your women in red dresses!” Guinevere yelled. “Right after you lock me away like a nuisance pet!”

“Let me get this straight.” A vein twitched at Oskar’s temple. “You tried to sneak out of here and travel to the Menagerie Coast on your own, knowing full well that a bunch of mercenaries hired by a mysterious evil presence are after you and the trunk— all because you’re in a jealous snit ?”

“Did you not read a word of my letter?” she railed. “Jealousy is not the reason.” In the back of her mind, Teinidh let out such a derisive snort that Guinevere’s face flamed. “Or at least it’s not the only reason—”

“I think it’s a bigger reason than you’ll ever admit,” Oskar growled. He stepped closer and slipped the straps of the rucksack off her shoulders. “What am I supposed to do with you? Someone who just hares off without even trying to work things out—”

“You lied to me,” she said as he tossed her rucksack aside, then moved on to divesting her of her cloak. “You told me you were going to buy sandwiches. But I happened to look out the window, and I saw you walk into an alley with your night dove.”

“Night dove?” he echoed, mystified. He threw her cloak on top of the rucksack where it lay on the floor in a sad heap. “Oh, you mean a se—”

Guinevere lurched forward to clap a hand over Oskar’s mouth before he could say the much cruder term sex worker.

He rolled his eyes and gave her fingers a sharp little nip.

She gasped and tried to draw back, but his hand was suddenly keeping her wrist in place while he soothed the sting with chaste, butterfly-light kisses to the tips of her fingers.

She refused to be swayed. “How dare you kiss my hand after cavorting with another woman!”

Oskar sighed. He lowered her hand away from his mouth.

“That woman was one of the mercenaries, and I was not cavorting with her—merely seeking information.” He cradled her fingers with his, squeezing reassuringly while he filled her in on what the uniya had told him.

“I’m sorry I lied, but I didn’t want to alarm you.

And, for what it’s worth, I did find a sandwich shop.

It might not necessarily be the best in Wildemount, but it’ll do, I think. ”

“Why are we talking about sandwiches?” In the last few minutes, Guinevere had experienced a staggering range of emotions, from jealousy to sorrow to lingering childhood trauma to anger.

Now she had crashed headlong into panic, and she was reeling from the whiplash.

“Oskar, whatever’s in the trunk, it’s valuable, yes, we’ve gathered that—but what do those mercenaries want with me ? ”

“You mentioned that the trunk is locked and only your father has the key to it. Maybe their plan is to hold you ransom in exchange for that key.” Oskar’s golden eyes flashed.

There was a stubborn set to his jaw that she was coming to know all too well.

“But they aren’t going to succeed. I won’t let them.

And I won’t let you go anywhere without me, either.

For as long as there is breath in my body, you will not face this world alone, Guinevere. Do you understand?”

He burned like fire. Rendered mute by his intensity, she could only nod. Far from relaxing, he glowered at her. “Now, let’s discuss this jealousy of yours.”

There was something about the look on his handsome face just then that made her slowly back away—not out of fear, exactly, but from some instinct for self-preservation.

Without missing a beat, he padded after her all the way across the room, until the door handle settled into the indents of her spine and she could go no farther.

He braced a hand over her head, caging her in with his body.

“I was being silly.” Her voice was unnaturally high.

Breathless. “I do admit to some possessiveness where you are concerned, but I realize that it is entirely misplaced.” It hurt to say it, but she owed it to him to be honest about her feelings.

Why, then, did he look madder and madder with each word that left her lips?

“You are free, of course, to do whatever you wish, with whomever you wish…” Her gaze darted to his temple.

The vein was back, and twitchier than ever before.

“After all, there are no promises between us. I don’t know why I do half the things I do, Oskar. You should ignore me.”

“I damn well wish I could,” he shot back.

And then he kissed her.