She cursed herself silently, sure she’d shattered everything they’d built—whatever it was they’d managed to piece together—with her careless want. After the way he’d stopped their kiss, the way he’d kept such careful distance, she wasn’t sure where she stood with him anymore.
There’s not much of me left to give to another person, he’d said. After today, she wasn’t sure how to tell him she’d take what she could get. Wasn’t sure when the knowing crept up on her, somewhere between their odd marriage and magic lessons and a swapping back and forth of saving each other.
Maybe, if she could go to Neve— if she could find out what her sister was doing, find out how to stop it, hem the frayed edges of their sisterhood— after, she and Eammon could figure out what this was. What it could be.
Eammon’s head turned in that way he had, just enough to fix her in place with one eye. Then he grabbed the edge of his blanket.
He pulled it between the bed and the fireplace, closer to the latter than the former. Red busied herself with climbing beneath her covers, aware of his every movement— how he shifted his head to find a comfortable angle, how his long, scarred fingers folded on his chest.
“I’m coming back,” Red said to the ceiling, because it was the only thing she could fit her tangled emotions to. “I don’t want to stay in Valleyda.”
Eammon didn’t respond. Slowly, she drifted, eyes closing, time stretching languid.
“Maybe you should,” Eammon murmured in the dark.
Chapter Twenty-Two
H e was gone when she woke, blanket crumpled, a note in his messy script perched on the desk. Tower.
Red dressed quickly— her leggings, his shirt, because old habits weren’t easy to break— and ran her fingers through her hair, working out tangles but leaving it loose. Gingerly, she walked down the stairs, concentrating so she wouldn’t slip on their moss-blunted edges. Lavender light bathed the tangle of branches and stone that used to be the corridor, made it almost beautiful.
When she reached the tower, shivering in the morning chill, Eammon leaned against a carved windowsill with a mug in one hand and a book in the other. He didn’t acknowledge her, other than flicking his eyes up from the book, but his grip on the mug tightened.
He’d poured her a cup, even added cream. Red lifted it to her lips as she slid into the chair. A lone tree branch sat in the middle of the table, twigs curled like claws. Bands of silver paint had been hastily drawn where the twigs split off from the limb’s main shaft. “Art project?”
His book snapped closed; Eammon tucked it beneath his arm. “Not quite.” When he lifted his cup to his mouth, his shirt rode up, exposing a line of pale, scarred skin.
Red took a gulp of coffee too quickly and burned her throat.
Eammon sat his now-empty cup next to the branch and jerked a thumb toward the painted silver bands. “The paint is there so we can see how much the branch grows. A benchmark for your progress.”
“That can’t grow.” Red took another sip, more carefully this time. “It’s dead.”
“So was that thornbush yesterday,” Eammon countered.
The mention of yesterday made their eyes dart away from each other.
She’d thought they could ignore it. She’d thought if they pretended it didn’t happen, it would fade into the background, a moment of weakness they’d grow beyond.
Foolish of her.
“I saw the thicket,” Eammon said, his voice steady even as the tips of his ears burned. He strode to the mantel and shelved his book, keeping his back to her. “We passed it right before we saw the missing sentinel. It was dead, dried out, and it obeyed you anyway.” The muscles in his shoulders moved as he crossed his arms. “Even in death, things stay tied to the Wilderwood.”
His voice was low, roughened with emotion she couldn’t parse with his face hidden. Tentatively, she touched the branch, nearly expecting it to spider-crawl over the table, but it remained still.
The silence tugged at her until she raised her narrowed eyes to his still-turned back. “Some direction would be welcome here, Eammon.”
She hadn’t meant to say his name. Even in irritation, it felt like too much in her mouth, too intimate after what they’d shared and the way he’d pulled away from it.
Kings, she wanted to kiss him again.
He turned, finally, something molten flickering in his eyes, halfway between anger and fevered heat. “You did well enough on your own yesterday.”
He had to stop mentioning yesterday, damn him. He said it like a challenge.