I open my mouth to retort, but he doesn’t give me a chance. He turns on a heel and crosses to the other side of the terrace, where his servants have arranged a beautiful dining table. It is big enough for six but set only for two, the surface covered with more food than I’ve seen in quite some time.
“Come on, then,” he calls back over his shoulder, the flash of anger already smoothed over. “We’ll sit. We’ll eat. We’ll talk.”
I hesitate only a moment before I trail after him. It takes effort not to flinch when he pulls out my chair for me. I swear I hear the ghost of a chuckle in the air as he pushes me in, the picture of polite manners, and takes his own seat at the opposite end.
Our eyes meet over the platters of food and hold for a long moment. Neither of us seems to know where to begin. Or perhaps he merely does not want to. He studies me, his eyes drinking in the angles of my face, the pale waves that frame it, the dark whorls of my mark peeking from the plunging bodice of my gown.
“Wine,” he mutters tightly, pouring clear golden liquid into two glass goblets. The muscle in his jaw is ticking. “Wine will help.”
He slides one goblet toward me, then promptly drains his own in two gulps and refills it to the brim. “Let’s begin with what happened on the mountain.”
“You mean the Reavers?” I ask. “Or the wildfire?”
“I mean the display of idiocy I witnessed from you.”
I stiffen. “Excuse me?”
“Tell me…are you so young, so untested, you cannot understand the risk you took in doing what you did?”
My brows rise at his calling me young. I may be especially lean these days, but I am not a child. Back in my village, half the girls my age were married by their sixteenth naming day; at twenty, I am on my way to spinsterhood.
Besides, he himself does not look so very ancient. When I first saw him on the mountain I’d placed him around Penn’s age, in his mid- to late twenties. Looking at him now, I question my own perception. Despite his youthful appearance, there is something about him—a stillness, a sense of unflinching control—that seems unquestionably…
Older.
“Forcing that much raw power when you have no idea whatyou’re doing is not only dangerous,” he says bluntly. “It is reckless beyond belief.”
“I managed just fine.”
His fingers tighten on his goblet stem. “The blood on your cloak painted a different picture.”
“I lived, didn’t I?”
“By the skin of your teeth.”
“That was hardly the worst thing I’ve had to survive in my life,” I mutter. “Not even in the past week, come to think of it.”
“Mmm. And what if you had collapsed at someone else’s feet? What if I had not been the one to discover you there, on the brink of exhaustion? You could’ve found yourself in bad company.”
“I’m not so sure I haven’t.”
His lips twist at one side. He lifts his goblet in a salute. “Fair enough.”
I watch him drink, the tanned column of his throat working rhythmically. My own wine sits untouched. I will not accept anything from his table—no matter how tempting the spread set out before me looks. Slices of cured meat, cheese, and crusty bread are stacked on platters beside marinated olives, fresh grapes, and a variety of other delectables. My eyes fix on a bowl of ruby-red strawberries and a rush of saliva fills my mouth.
It has been a long time since I’ve had a strawberry. Years. The past few harvests, even Eli’s thriving gardens had begun to fail. Whatever ailments plague Anwyvn, whatever blight grips her growing seasons in the Midland kingdoms blessedly spared Seahaven for most of my youth. But the peninsula’s fertile stretch of soil could not remain forever immune to the spreading sickness that leaves crops to wither on the vine and farmers to go hungry at their dinner tables. By the end, all we could grow were the most hardy vegetables. Corn. Potatoes. The occasional carrot or radish.
Still…I have not forgotten the sweetness of a strawberry on my tongue.
“Take one,” a melodious voice interjects into my thoughts.
I start, glancing up into a set of piercing blue eyes. They are fixed on me with such intensity, my pulse quickens to a patter.
“No, thank you.”
“You clearly want one. Why not indulge yourself?”
My teeth clench as I lie, “I’m not hungry.”