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“You can’t just—”

Keil thumped on the ceiling, cutting me off, and then we were rolling again, my body jerking with the movement. He leaned forward, looking me fully in the eyes for the first time since I entered the foyer this evening. His gaze was fervent, his voice low and even as he asked, “What is happening here?”

I could hear my heartbeat in my ears, feel its frantic thrum against my throat. The soap-and-linen scent of him, so painfully familiar, filled my lungs with each inhale. “With what?” I asked, my voice too small to bear the magnitude of his question.

“With you. With us.”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

“Don’t lie to me, Alissa.” He spoke firmly, calmly—and I bristled, resentful of his steadiness when I felt so miserably wrung-out.

“Is now really the best time for this conversation?” I asked sharply.

“I wanted to have it earlier, but you’ve barred me from seeing you for three weeks.”

“So your solution is to trap me in a carriage with you?”

“You’re free to leave,” he said, holding my stare. “You always have been.”

Guilt swept through me. I looked away, but Keil only leaned closer, elbows on his knees.

“I feel you pulling away from me,” he said, pain seeping into his voice, “and I don’t understand why. If you cannot give me any part of yourself, at least give me the truth.”

I closed my eyes, forcing out the words. “I just think it’s safest if we don’t . . . continue to treat each other the way we have been.”

“Safest for whom?”

I looked at him then, and he must have read at least a fraction of the truth in my expression because he leaned back, his jaw tensing.

Then he asked, “What did Erik say to you on Neyamay?”

I jolted, the words spearing through my mind: I would have taken great pleasure in cutting him open in front of you. It’ll be something to look forward to.

“Nothing,” I said.

“He must have shaken you in some way,” Keil pressed, “if you are choosing to let your fear ruin this.”

“I am not afraid,” I said quickly, defensive. “And I am not ruining anything that wasn’t primed to crumble anyway.”

“Is that what you really believe?”

“All I believe is that we agreed to be allies on my first day in Ansora, and we shouldn’t be anything more. I care about you, and—”

“That’s what you’re calling it?” Keil asked. “Caring about me?”

I clenched my jaw, speaking through my teeth. “I don’t know what else to call it.”

“I think you do,” he said, unyielding. “And I think that is exactly why you’re so afraid.”

“I told you, I’m not—”

“And I told you. Don’t lie to me.”

I fisted my hands over my lap, my specter writhing with frustration. And with the internal admission that Erik’s threat was not all he’d branded into my mind that day.

Now the memory forced its way back—how he’d laid out the darkest parts of me as though spreading out a corpse on a dissecting table, taunting me with my own deeds.

Does he know every part of you, the way I do?