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Except he had let it. They’d grown it together and now it was dead. The Song’s magic reached for the plant, intent on breathing new life into the dead stalks. She cut it off.
Don’t bother.
It wasn’t the plant she wanted. It never had been.
She turned on Verol. “I need to ask you something and I need you to tell me the truth.”
Wariness crept into his eyes. “All right.”
“What did you say to Numair in the woods?”
Verol reevaluated the plant, as if connecting it to the subject of her question, even if he wasn’t sure how. “I told him not to promise you things he couldn’t give you. I told him not to hurt you.”
“That was all?” Her fingers clenched around the brittle blooms, crumbling them.
“Nothing more.”
“Did you threaten him?”
“No.”
“Did you reach into his mind?”
Verol jerked back like she’d slapped him. “Clare—no.”
The crisp petals crackled between her clenched fingers. There had to be an explanation. This wasn’t right. None of this was Numair. Something else was going on. Something was wrong. Even with the way he’d been acting, he wouldn’t just let it die. Not unless…not unless he was hurt. Hurt so badly his magic had drained, that he didn’t have the strength to spend it on a plant.
He hadn’t been in the palace today.
She rattled off some excuse to Quin and Verol and rode Kialla to Numair’s. Dropped the mare in the paddock with Hellack and went straight to the hidden door. It was gone. Not a changed lock, but gone, its seams mortared over. So she climbed the window to his balcony and, when the sliding door wouldn’t open, broke the glass so she could reach inside and unlatch it.
It took her fifteen minutes of searching the house before she found him, in that room with the bag she’d once hit until her knuckles bled. Where he was doing the same thing right now.
Fine. Physically, he was fine. By the time she’d accepted that fact she’d been watching him long enough to grow angry at how he was pretending she wasn’t there. Pretending he hadn’t seen her reflection in the windows. As if his ignoring her long enough would make her disappear.
The pain that had been festering in her chest for the last week bubbled up, boiling over, until she was striding across the room and placing herself between him and the bag so he couldn’t pretend away her existence anymore.
He reared back, throwing his entire body into the movement to keep his next punch from landing. “What the fuck?” he spat. True anger laced his words, of a kind Clare had never heard directed at her. Not from him.
That increasingly bad feeling spiraled in her chest, stoking the flames of her anger, her confusion. “I could say the same thing to you.”
He stalked away, to the water pitcher that rested on a bench on the other side of the room. Poured a glass and went right back to pretending she wasn’t there. He’d never ignored her like this. Never treated her like…like one of those other women at court. Like she was contemptuously beneath his notice, even when he was paying her attention.
Her stomach clenched. “It’s been a week.”
Nothing.
She bit her lower lip until she tasted copper. “I was worried about you.”
He laughed. It was cold and harsh and utterly unlike him. He put his hand to his heart. “I’m so touched. Did the unanswered letters and the walled-over door not tell you I don’t want your concern? How did you even get in here? Oh, wait.” He snapped his fingers. “I forgot. You like to climb walls like a gutter rat.”
She flinched. He made her flinch. Her hands curled into fists, but he wasn’t finished.
“Ferrian’s flames, do I have to hire a contingent of private soldiers just to keep you out of my house?”
“No.” She laced the word with violence and promise, hurt and confusion. “I told you once the only thing you needed to keep me out of here was your words.”
He drained the rest of the water and slammed the glass down hard enough it cracked. “Then get out.”
