Page 64 of Fierce Highland Magic

"Both, perhaps."

"That's not acceptable."

"No," he said quietly. "It isn't."

For a moment, neither of us moved.

The market's noise had thinned on the ridge. We stood above it, but not beyond it. Music floated up from the lanes below: a fiddle playing something fast and bright, drumbeats too steady to be reassuring. The smell of burnt sugar reached us in waves, followed by copper and wet stone and the faint green scent of crushed leaves.

I should have turned and walked away. Except I didn't know where to go.

I should have demanded an explanation. Except he had already told me the only answer he was willing to give.

I should have been grateful he had not lied. The thought came with such immediate disgust that I shoved it aside.

Rowan shifted his weight from the birch trunk.

"I'm not asking you to forgive the passage," he said. "I would not. It was a dreadful lane. The water had no manners at all."

"This is not about the water."

"No. It rarely is."

"Then why are you talking about it?"

"Because I am very good at talking about things that are not the thing."

"That is obvious."

His smile almost appeared. I let him stop it. That should not have mattered. It did.

He glanced toward the curve in the path, where silver birches gave way to a stand of dark yews. Beyond them, the market's center glowed faintly between the tents: a distant wash of amber and rose, thin as a pulse behind closed skin.

"We should move," he said.

"No."

His brows lifted.

"No?"

"I'm not following you until I know whether you plan to spend more of yourself at the next stall you find."

"That is difficult to predict."

"It shouldn't be."

"You are asking me to promise something I do not know how to promise."

"Then learn."

The words left me before I could make them safer.

Rowan's face changed. Only for a moment.

The market's lantern-light sharpened the hollows beneath his cheekbones. The charm had slipped far enough that I caught the exhaustion beneath it—not just a tired night, not an inconvenience. Something much older. Something that lived in the way he held himself, as if every part of him expected a blow and had learned to keep standing anyway.

Then the mask returned. "An excellent suggestion," he said. "I'll add it to my list."