I step closer before I mean to, enough that the air between us tightens.
“You disappeared,” I say quietly. “And then I felt the bond stretch like it was being pulled apart thread by thread. Do you have any idea what that does to control?”
Her expression flickers, but then settles into something stubborn. “You don’t get to cage me because you’re afraid.”
I laugh once, short and incredulous. “You think this is fear?”
Her magic stirs, brushing against mine, sparks of heat and resistance tangling together. “Then what is it?”
The anger in her voice should have been the thing I focused on. The accusation. The grief underneath it. Instead, what I feel first is the aftertaste of that risk she took, how close she came to being trapped beneath the earth with no way out, how easily a single misstep could have turned shadow-walking into burial.
It is not fear that sharpens my tone when I answer her. It is control, regained quickly.
“I will not be maneuvered, Amelia.”
She turns fully toward me as if I have struck her. “What does that even mean?”
“It means I am not going to stand in your presence and pretend we have built trust that doesn’t exist yet,” I say, keeping my voice even by force rather than ease. “You left without informing me. You moved on a threat alone. You acted as if you were the only person in this partnership with anything to lose.”
Her eyes flash. “Partnership?” she repeats, incredulous. “You were in Velcryn. With the Matrons. I sent a message.”
“You left a note on a table,” I correct, and I hate how cold it sounds even as I say it. “You did not tell me where you were going. You did not tell me what you were doing. And on top of that you intended to shadow-walk into root tunnels in a land that is already sick.”
“And you think that’s suspicious,” she says, voice tightening, “because you can’t imagine me doing something unless it benefits me.”
“That is not what I said.”
“It is exactly what you said,” she snaps, stepping closer, her magic rising in the air like heat off stone. “You said you won’t be maneuvered. As if I had some grand plan to push you around while my home collapses.”
I do not move back, although the instinct to close distance, to contain, to shield, to anchor, runs through me hard enough to make my teeth clench. The bond does not help. It drags awareness between us until I can feel the tremor in her pulse and the furious effort she is making not to let it show.
“I am saying that you acted like a lone blade,” I tell her. “And lone blades get snapped.”
Her jaw tightens. “You don’t get to talk to me like I’m a soldier you trained.”
“No,” I agree. “You are not a soldier. You are the heir of a dying land, and you are making decisions that can turn two realms into ruins.”
“That is rich,” she spits. “Coming from the man who thinks every problem is solved by control.”
Something sharp flickers inside me at the word, because it is true, because it is exactly what I have been shaped into, and because she has seen too much of me already to be wrong.
“You want honesty?” I say. “Fine. I do not assume malice from you. I assume strategy. And yes, I assume the possibility that you might choose your people over this bond if you believed you had to.”
Her eyes widen slightly, outrage sharpening into disbelief. “You think I’m going to betray you.”
“I think you are capable of it,” I answer, and the bluntness lands between us like a thrown knife. “Just as I am capable of choosing Velcryn over you. That is what power forces on people who lead.”
Her expression turns dangerous in a quieter way. “So you’re punishing me for being competent.”
“I am holding you accountable for being reckless,” I shoot back. “You heard treason. You heard planning. You heard poison and blame and collapse, and you walked away without taking anything tangible.”
“I walked away because confronting them in that tunnel would have been suicide,” she says, her voice rising with the force of reason she is trying to use like a weapon. “I walked away because I need proof. Evidence. Not a hunch.”
“And you decided to gather that proof alone,” I say. “Again.”
Her laugh is sharp, humorless. “You keep saying that like you were available.”
“I would have been,” I say, and I hear the edge in my own voice now, the part of me that is no longer speaking only asan ally but as someone who felt the bond strain hard enough to make my magic stutter. “If you had given me the chance. I promised you I would, didn't I?”
