“Rhiannon’s magic, I know. You could have tried harder, Dorian. You could have built a circle of half-truths for me to figure out. Hell, you could at least have refused me that night.”
“I could have,” he said. “But I already…”
“You already what?”
His gaze stayed on me, wide and open. It was so full of meaning, it made my insides clench.
I turned toward the rain—familiar, easy. It never challenged me, never surprised me.
We stayed silent for a time, until his voice lilted through the cave. “You’ve no idea how beautiful you are,” he said.
“Leave off it. You couldn’t throw a stone without hitting a blond-haired, blue-eyed fae in Highmark.”
“That’s not what I mean, Eurydice.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. I felt suddenly cold, like I stood in the rain.
“Your beauty has so little to do with what you look like, though some men might not see past it. But that’s their fault.” He paused, and his breath out was uneven. “From the night I met you, I’ve been terrified of you.”
I burst into echoing laughter. That was the stupidest lie I’d ever heard. It wasn’t even believable.
“There’s a power in you,” he said. “It turned you toward my blade. It climbed you out of that wagon even though you were concussed. It sent you into the grove to look upon the spiritstag as though it were your equal and not a god.”
“Stop it.”
“When I found out we were paired, I thought we would die—and not because of you. Because ofme.”
I shivered. “You told me I was your burden.”
“I said that because I was bitter.Iwas the burden, Eurydice. Every woman is paired with a man in those trials, andheis the burden.”
I could handle his softness even less than his hardness. This actually hurt. “We would have died without your magic in the Eldermaze.”
“No,” he whispered. “You called the rain. You’d have called it if you’d needed it before then.”
I turned. The sight of him made me want to yellandcry. “Why do you hate changelings?”
He tapped his fingers on his thigh. “Before I answer that question, I need to show you something.”
“Show me, then.”
“I can’t right now. It’s in the inner district.”
My arms tightened over my body. “Theinnerdistrict? We can’t.”
“Of course we can, Eury.”
“We’re not—I’m not…”
He let out a soft laugh. “You’re not highborn?”
Yes, that was it. The thought of going into the inner district was as incomprehensible as breaking through the wall with our bare hands. It was completely, totally off-limits.
“You killed a queen, Eurydice.” A faint smile appeared. “Now you’d let one little wall stop you?”
I came forward. I dropped down onto the cave floor a few paces away and wrapped my cloak around myself. “It’s not little.”
“A wall stands highest in the mind.” He leaned forward, nudged one of the pouches my way. “Rabbit meat?”