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He put up his hands in mock surrender. “I’m unarmed, I swear.”
He leaned against the door, but it was obvious he worked at this pose of nonchalance. A boiling storm gathered at the darkest edges of his gaze, and his jaw jumped with suppressed anger.
Rubbing her temples, Morgan put aside Uncle Owen’s book. She’d been reading for hours. Puzzling out the arcane language, the faded diagrams, the riddles within stories within puzzles that marked so many of the old texts. The basic idea seemed simple enough. It was the execution that brought on the headache.
“It doesn’t look as if your uncle accepted your regrets.”
“I’ll be spending a few hours at the Abercrombies’.” When she opened her mouth to argue, his gaze warned her she spoke at her own risk. “I don’t want to. I have to. There’s a difference. We’ll adjust, Morgan.”
“Adjust? The board’s set. The pieces are moving, and you’re going to step away for a night of hobnobbing with the best and brightest? It’s not a matter of adjusting. It’s insanity.”
Cam’s face went hard as stone, his hands tightening to instant fists. But whatever he thought to say, he bit back. Instead, he crossed to the hearth, slowly uncurling his palms to warm them over the fire.
“I’ve seen them, Cam. The true Fey are crossing over. And their numbers will only grow as Andraste’s patience wanes until there won’t be any stopping them. No barriers the Amhas-draoi erect will hold them back.”
He spun to face her. “You’ve seen them? Where? Why didn’t you warn me?” His questions came like bullets.
“In Green Park. Others moving east on the streets toward the river. More fanning north toward Regent’s Park. For now groups of twos and threes. But it’s only beginning.”
He rubbed his chin, his gaze trained inward as if he was considering. “It complicates things, but there’s no help for it. I have to go tomorrow night.”
She waited for his reasoning. Even a halfhearted excuse. His uncle’s tyranny. His aunt’s pleading. His sister playing the guilt card. What had caused him to reverse course? To decide that a night out in the company of his old London friends was more important than ending the looming threat of Doran and his mastery of Neuvarvaan’s black magics? Or worse in her mind, a dropping of the walls as the true Fey sought to succeed where she and Cam failed?
The silence grew, the air charged with suppressed emotion and anger.
She broke first. “Very well. If you go, I go.”
“No.”
“Excuse me?” She cocked her head, unsure if she’d misunderstood. Hoping she’d misunderstood.
“No, I said. I go alone.” Misery stamped his features. But a rough-edged misery that didn’t allow for comfort or even question.
“Well, if we’re supposed to be newly married, won’t it seem a bit strange if you show up without me?” She tried to sound reasonable. Conciliatory. It wouldn’t help to lose her temper. Cam was doing that enough for the both of them.
“I need to do this alone, Morgan. It’s not about you and me. It’s about my uncle, and he’s warned me that bringing you is not part of the bargain.”
Now they were getting somewhere. “What sort of bargain?”
He shrugged. “Forget it.”
“I think I’m entitled to know what your family thinks of me.”
He braced his hands on the mantel, his gaze focused on the fire as if he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—face her. “Uncle Josh has asked that I come without you.”
“I see.”
And she did.
Like an icy dousing, his words froze straight through to the pathetic part of her that wanted to be part of that glittering world. Yearned for his love. And wasn’t that just more proof of her own pathetic wishy-washiness? She was supposed to be hard as nails. A fighter. An Amhas-draoi. Not some debutante in search of a suitable husband.
She squared her shoulders, laced her fingers together in her lap. Fought to regain the warrior mantle slipping from her shoulders.
His scalding gaze met her new cool remoteness. “You think I want to go? Or that I think those things?”
She kept silent. Afraid she might reveal the truth.
It only angered him further.
