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"That he wanted the forest searched. That he wanted you found."

I shrugged. "Half of England wants me found."

"One of them asked whether you needed to be alive."

The fire shifted in the hearth, and the cabin went very quiet.

"And?"

"He didn't specify."

I sat down on the floor, because it seemed better than falling onto it. Fitzwalter had not sent those men to arrest me. There had been no warrant in that clearing and no voice calling for my surrender, and the first thing out of the brush had been an arrow aimed at the center of my chest. No trial, no rope, no gallows at Nottingham with a crowd and a charge read aloud. He had sent them to erase me, the same way he’d erased my father, quietly and without a single witness who mattered.

I looked up at the man lying in my father's bed, bleeding through my stitches.

"You knew they might follow you in."

"Yes."

"And you came anyway."

"Yes."

"Why?"

He was quiet for a long moment, studying my face in the candlelight with that patient unhurried attention of his, and when he answered, he said it like it was obvious. "Because you deserved to know."

Not because I was an Omega, which half the men in this kingdom would have made it about inside a minute. Not because he wanted the seal back, or a confession, or my cooperation, or anything at all that I could see. Because I deserved the truth, and nobody had bothered to bring it to me in six years.

I got up fast, before he could read whatever was happening on my face.

His hand came up and caught my wrist again. It wasn’t a grip. There was no strength in it at all, barely more than fingers resting on my skin, and the heat of it went up my arm exactly the way it had in the torchlight on the night I stole his ring.

"Robin."

I looked down at his hand.

He let go immediately.

That mattered more than I can explain. He let go the instant my eyes dropped, without being asked, with no argument and no second attempt, and something in my chest that had been braced for six years let out a breath it had been holding.

But I didn't move.

His hand had fallen back onto the mattress between us. I studied it for just a moment. Then my eyes darted back to him. Because I’d apparently decided that surviving an assassination attempt was not enough danger for one day, I put my hand back into his. Guy went completely still.

I almost laughed at the surprise on his face.

"You let go," I said.

"You looked at my hand."

"Yes."

"I thought you wanted me to."

"I did."

His brow furrowed. "And now?"