She stared at his back, at the wide line of his shoulders, at the man who had taken every blow meant for her until he was made of scar tissue and stubbornness. She wanted to cross the space and put her hand on the back of his neck and say here. But she could feel the edge of the cliff under both their feet.
"It is not calm for me either," she said, tired and furious. "Do you think I enjoy this? That I like being a rumor with legs? That I wanted to take strays and nobles and shove them into one pen and say 'play nice'? I am choosing the least bloody path every hour of my life. And you..." she pointed at him, low and shaking "...you are supposed to choose it with me."
He faced her again, eyes bright with something close to pain.
"I am. That's why I want to tear his throat out. That's why I want to throw the nobles into the yard and let my wolves show them what protection looks like. Because choosing you means keeping you breathing, and you keep choosing to stand between all of these blades and call it politics."
"Choosing me means listening when I tell you that brute force right now is a gift to our enemies," she shot back. "Choosing me means trusting that I know how to stop a riot without starting a war inside our gates."
He laughed once, hard.
"And trusting you means trusting him? Because every coin I'm asked to spend ends up paying for Brad."
"Stop making this about him," Ann snapped, heat flashing through her. "This is about us. This is about you deciding that the worst version of me offered by people who want me dead is the truest one."
He flinched again. Good. Let it hurt.
"Do you have any idea," she said, voice slipping dangerous-soft, "what it did to me when you looked at me on those steps and asked if the rumors were true? When every part of you roared mine at a crowd and then whispered maybe not at me?"
He shut his eyes. Just for a second.
"I shouldn't have..."
"No," she agreed. "You shouldn't have."
They stood there breathing like they'd run a race. The chair between them kept being a chair only because neither of them decided to break it.
On the balcony, a shout rose...distant, then silenced by a guard's barked order. The palace took another breath and held it.
"Say it," he said suddenly, ragged. "Say you didn't want him here."
"I didn't want him anywhere," she shot back. "But I wanted to live more. I wanted our pups to live more. I wanted an assassin to hesitate, Adam. That's all."
The word pups hit him like a hand to the chest. Some of the fury eased; the wolf behind his eyes blinked as if remembering the rest of the world.
He reached out without seeming to decide to...fingertips hovering just above her stomach. He didn't touch. Didn't dare, not with both of them so close to breaking and the restraint burned.
"Every choice you've made in the last week," he said, voice low, "feels like it cut pieces off me."
"Every hour you've been gone," she said, "felt like it cut pieces off me."
Maeve sighed, annoyed and fond all at once.
Jesus christ…will you both decide whether or not to kiss or kill, because this stalemate is giving me a headache.
Neither. Of course neither.
Adam's hand curled into a fist and dropped.
"You're trusting the wrong people," he said, quieter but no less brutal. "You're building this kingdom on promises from wolves who have every reason to hate us, from a Daemon Lord who owes us his daughter and her mates and from a poor excuse of a man who used to be your mate and still looks at you like you're the answer to every prayer he ever uttered to the Moon Goddess."
Ann's laugh came out like a broken thing.
"And you're trusting your worst fears. You think lineage is proof. It isn't. Action is. Loyalty isn't bloodlines...it's what you do when it costs you. Those Lycans are eating insults and not striking back. That's loyalty. Lord Brarthroroz is tearing seams to bring Lexi home. That's loyalty. Brad..." she forced herself to say it "...left when I told him to. That is, finally, loyalty."
"Or strategy," Adam said. "Or obsession. Or both."
"Everything is both," Ann said. "Especially in war."
They stared each other down until her vision stung.
He broke first...not the fight, just the gaze...looking away like he'd run out of room inside his own skin. "I can't keep doing this tonight," he said. "If I stay I'll say something I can't take back."
"Then go," she said, because she would not beg. Not for this.
His eyes snapped to hers again, wounded.
"That easily?"
"No," she said. "Nothing about you is easy. Nothing about us is easy. But if what you have left for me tonight is doubt, then take it somewhere else until you can bring me something better."
For a second he didn't move. Then he turned, ripping the door open so hard the hinges protested. He paused in the doorway, shoulders high, head down, a man deciding whether to jump or climb back.
He didn't look back.
He left. The door shut with a hard, final sound that knocked the air out of the room.
The silence that followed wasn't quiet. It roared.
Ann stood very still, both hands flat on the chair as if it were the only thing holding her upright. Her throat burned. Her eyes did, too. She blinked hard and kept blinking until the room stopped blurring.
"If you're going to cry," Maeve said, gentler than she had any right to be, do it where no one can smell it.
"I know," Ann whispered.
She crossed to the balcony, shoved the doors open, and let the cold air slap her cheeks. The grounds stretched below...tents, lines, glints of watchfire, Dark Moon on patrol, the new portal site sketched white against dark earth. Somewhere out there, nobles in silk whispered poison into one another's mouths. Somewhere farther, a Daemon Lord ripped at the seams of the world. Somewhere farther still, Lexi bled.
And Adam was three corridors away punching stone until his knuckles bruised because it hurt less than talking.
Ann pressed her palms to the balcony rail and bowed her head. The weight of war, of duty, of a love that wouldn't stop biting...they all settled on the same bone and ached.
She didn't sob. She didn't have the breath to spare for it.
She just let one tear carve a clean line down her cheek, then another, until the sting cleared her sight enough to see the chalk lines of the future again.
"You're allowed to break," Maeve murmured. "You just don't get to stay broken."
"I know," Ann said again, voice a rasp.
Behind her, the door stayed closed.
She straightened, wiped her face with the heel of her hand, and fixed her eyes on the half-built bones of the portal house. If she couldn't pull Adam back from his worst fear tonight, she'd pull Lexi back from hell. One of the two would have to obey.
She was filled with the relief that he'd returned only to have it replaced by the dread that they were splintering. Both truths slid under her ribs and pierced her heart.
And it hurt like hell.
Ann lifted her chin into the cold and didn't move until the stars blurred and sharpened again.
The storm hadn't passed. It had just learned her name and was only just getting started.