Page 25 of Dark Night of the Soul

“You’re not the one being left behind,” Ophelia said. “You’re the reason they’re moving.”

That should have been comforting.

It wasn’t.

I went looking for him immediately. I didn’t find him inside.

That should have been my first clue.

I crossed the back lawn, my boots damp with dew, the manor rising behind me like a false promise of safety. The wards shimmered faintly at the edges of my vision. There if you knew how to look, invisible if you didn’t.

He stood near the tree line.

One hand braced on a tree. The other on the hilt of the knife at his waist. Standing there.

Watching the perimeter. Like a man on guard.

He didn’t turn when I approached but I knew—knew—he sensed I was there. He always did.

His sightline was up the edge of the forest. Which meant he saw me walk through it to talk to Killian.

I didn’t greet him with a hello or calling his name. When I closed the gap between us, I said, “You sent Silas away.”

He looked at me then, the sun catching in his eyes and making the color change from gold to green. Sometimes warm like honey. Other times a cold muted green. Those were the times I avoided him like the plague.

They were muted green today.

And I was about to pick a fight.

“Yes.” Flat. Honest.

Anger flared, cutting through the dread that dogged me all morning. “Without telling me.”

“I don’t need permission.” His expression was closed, guarded. Wrath, tightly leashed.

I sucked in a breath, sharp. “Permission?” The word leaked out on a heated hiss. “You let me sleep next to you, drink coffee you brought me, and then walk out the door thinking everything was fine.”

His hand flexed on the knife hilt. Not drawing it. Never that. Grounding himself.

“Everything is not fine,” he said.

“I know that,” I snapped. “That’s why we talk. That’s why we plan. Together.”

His gaze cut back to the forest. “Silas volunteered.”

“That’s not the point.”

“It is,” he said. Final. “He understood the risks.”

“And I didn’t?” I stepped closer, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him. “Or did you decide for me again?”

That got his attention.

He turned then, shoulders squared, presence snapping into place like a shield raised between me and the world. For a moment, I wanted to flinch. Step back. But I held my ground. This was like our old arguments, with tension so thick between us you could cut it with a knife.

The difference from then to now was he looked more lethal, more deadly, more… everything. Like something switched on inside him.

“I decided they wouldn’t get to you,” he said.