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‘Tared, you were an arse! And also really very angry!’
‘Yes, but …’ His voice caught; he shook his head as if to chase off a nagging fly. ‘Look, I’ve been living in the same house withEdored for centuries. What part of that gave you the impression I make a habit of kicking people out over a fight or two?’
I scoffed. ‘That’s different, isn’t it?’
‘Is it?’ His eyebrows shot up. ‘I can assure you he’s pissed me offmuchmore over the years than even the ill-advised lies of some little fae brat ever did.’
‘Half fae,’ I grumbled reflexively.
He grinned. ‘Irrelevant. You have a long way to go if you ever want to reach those levels of exasperation, Em.’
‘Yes, but …’ I swung a frustrated gesture in the rough direction of the Skeire home. ‘Edored has been family for longer than I have lived. He’s …blood. That’s not … you know?’
Tared didn’t move – didn’t even blink. ‘What?’
‘What, what?’
‘I … I’m afraid I’m not following you.’ He rubbed his sleeve over his wounded arm, frowning at me. ‘What in the world does blood have to do with anything, exactly?’
‘Well, some people care about that sort of thing,’ I said shrilly. ‘Valter and Editta did, apparently.’
‘Valter and Editta,’ he said with a groan, ‘are human heaps of shit who don’t have the faintest fucking idea of the daughter they could have had if they’d pulled their heads out of their arses for half a minute. Let’s just assume the rest of their judgement is equally flawed, alright? I feel that’ll be more efficient than having to disprove every other bit of nonsense they decided to instil in you over the years.’
My throat clenched violently and without warning, turning every gulp of breath into a lungful of thorns and brambles. Fuck. I wasnotgoing to think about that moment of understanding with Zera’s bag in my arms, the fear and hurt I’d sensed in the hearts of the people I’d called my parents – I wasnotgoing to curl up on the floor and bawl like a lost child. But my voice came out like a squeak all the same. ‘Alright.’
His frown deepened. ‘Do I need to find a slightly kinder way to describe them?’
‘It’s not that,’ I managed. ‘I’m just … I’m trying to understand how alves define their families, if blood doesn’t have anything to do with it.’
‘Ah.’ He blew out his cheeks. ‘Well, that’s easier. You’ve eaten at our table, you’ve slept in our beds, you’ve risked your life for us and we’ve risked our lives for you. Which means you’re one of us now, as far as I’m concerned. We’re simple creatures, really.’
I stared at him – couldn’t stop staring at him, as if the sight of his slender face and tousled blond hair would make the words he was speaking any more comprehensible.
One of us.
This was entirely too simple.
‘But …’ Words had come so easily a moment ago, and now I just found myself gaping at him in silent astonishment, feeling like I was slipping – sliding away over the smoothest ice, grasping desperately for any grip or support. Itcouldn’tbe this easy. He had been much, much too angry for it to be this easy. Surely he would tell me next that he was no longer joining me for sword training from today on. That he wished me good luck telling the rest of the Underground about this nonsense on my own. Or worse, perhaps he wouldn’tsayanything, only treat me with just a hint of frigid distance at breakfast tomorrow and never again grin as broadly at me as he used to …
‘Em,’ he interrupted my frantic thoughts, head tilted a fraction, grey eyes examining me closely. ‘What is the matter? I’m telling you you’re not going anywhere. There’s no reason to be scared here. Why are you looking at me like I just announced your dying day?’
‘I just …’ My voice came out like a child’s squeak. ‘I’m trying to understand … You’re not going to keep holding it against me? That I lied to you? For … I don’t know, theoretical eternity?’
He stared at me.
I stared at him.
An endless stretch of silence ticked by. Contrary to the usual nature of time, I felt myself grow younger and younger with every moment of it – shrinking, shrivelling into a little creature that could be crushed with a single barbed smile.
Tared did not smile.
‘I suppose,’ he said finally, slowly, visibly searching for words even as he spoke them, ‘that that explains a couple of things. You never told me the worst of it, did you?’
‘Of what?’ I yelped.
‘Those human parents of yours.’ His lip curled into a small sneer as he repeated, voice sharp with disgust now, ‘Parents.’
It was that disgust that hit me like a fist in the stomach, and at once I knew the nameless dread bubbling up in my lower belly, the poisonous claw of failure – the sensation of not even knowingwhatwas wrong, just thatIwas wrong, that I’d failed and disappointed and turned out to be wholly unsatisfactory. My anger had seeped out of me like sand between my fingers. I couldn’t even joke anymore. It was too sharp, the memory of Valter’s letter pressed into my hands – it still stung too deep.
