Chapter 2

Briar

The front door opened before I got to it.

Callum stood in the doorway with two buttons undone on his shirt and his hair like he'd been running his hand through it for an hour. He took one look at me and his expression did the thing it always did—settled into something patient and tired, like a man who had been waiting for a particular inconvenience to arrive and here it finally was.

"Briar."

"Is it true?" I said.

He stepped back from the door. Not an invitation, exactly. More like making room for the inevitable.

I came in anyway.

The entry hall was the same as it always was—dark wood, stone floor, that faint smell of old money that I'd never been able to identify exactly but had always associated with this house. With him. With the particular feeling of standing somewhere I wasn't quite supposed to be.

Callum closed the door and turned to face me. He didn't say anything.

"Is it true?" I asked again.

"Yes." Flat. No preamble. "It's true."

I'd known that before I drove here. I'd known it when I read the notification, and when I sat by the river, and when I told Emrys I was going anyway. But there was something about hearing Callum say it out loud, in that even voice of his, that made it land differently. More real. More final.

"Why her?" I said.

He looked at me for a moment. I knew that look. I'd been on the receiving end of it more times than I wanted to count—the quiet assessment, the slight tension around his eyes that wasn't quite pity and wasn't quite irritation but was somehow both.

"She fits," he said. "You never did."

I almost laughed.

Five years. That's what I got. Four words.

"That's it?" I said. "That's the whole answer?"

"What other answer would help you, Briar?"

"I don't know, maybe an actual one." I could hear the edge in my own voice and I didn't care. "You've been saying that to me for five years. You don't fit, Briar. That's not how things work, Briar. And I kept thinking I was missing something, like if I could just figure out what you actually meant—"

"You weren't missing anything."

"So it was always a no."

He didn't answer that. Which was its own answer.

I stood there in his entry hall and did the thing I'd been not doing for half a decade. "Did you ever feel anything? Even once. I'm asking you directly. Just tell me."

Something shifted in his face. Not much, but something. He opened his mouth—

Footsteps on the stairs.

Isolde came down in a dark silk robe, her hair loose, moving soft and unhurried like she hadn't been listening at the top of the landing. She was the kind of person who always looked composed, even at two in the morning. It was one of the things about her I'd never been able to decide if I admired or hated.

"Briar." Her voice was warm. Genuinely, perfectly warm. Her hand came to rest on my arm. "Honey, I know this must be so hard—"

She leaned in close. Close enough that only I could hear what she said next.

And she said exactly the kind of thing that Isolde would say. The kind of thing that doesn't bruise anywhere visible.

My hand came up.

I don't know exactly what I planned to do with it. Probably nothing I'd be proud of. But it didn't matter, because Callum was already moving—one step, two—and then he was between us, his shoulder angled toward me, his body blocking her the way you'd block a door.

"Briar." His voice had changed. Harder now. Colder. "Apologize."

Not what did she say. Not are you okay. Just: apologize. The tone he used when he was managing a situation. The same tone he'd used the time I'd backed my bike into the Crane estate's stone wall and he'd had to come explain it to his father.

I looked at him standing there.

His back was mostly to me. His attention was on Isolde—checking her over, making sure she was fine, doing what he always did which was assume she was the one who needed looking after. Behind him, I could see Isolde's face over his shoulder. She wasn't crying. Her eyes were dry and very clear.

I put my hand down.

"You know what," I said. "Sure."

He turned slightly, probably expecting a fight.

I walked past both of them to the front door. Let myself out. Went down the drive in the dark, and when I got to my bike I didn't stop walking—I just got on it, put my hands on the bars, and sat there for a second.

The front door was still open behind me. I could feel it.

"Drive safe."

That was all he said. Two words. The kind of thing you say to someone who came to pick up a package.

I started the bike.

I was on the road, maybe a quarter mile out, when my phone buzzed in my jacket pocket. I almost left it. I had a pretty good idea of what kind of message I was in the mood to receive right now, which was none, but I pulled over anyway and checked it.

Not Callum.

Emrys: My offer still stands. Same day, same time. Think about it.

I sat there on the side of the road and read it twice.

Then I looked at the dark ahead of me and thought about going home, going to my room, lying awake for four hours staring at the ceiling while my parents slept down the hall perfectly fine about all of this.

I put my phone away.

I turned toward town instead.