It took Aelin ten blocks to stop the shaking in her bones, ten blocks to debate whether she would even tell them what she’d seen and what she had planned—but walking in the door and seeing Aedion pacing by the window was enough to set her on edge again.
“Would you look at that,” she drawled, throwing back her hood. “I’m alive and unharmed.”
“You said two hours—you were gone four.”
“I had things to do—things that only I can do. So to accomplish those things, I needed to go out. You’re in no shape to be in the streets, especially if there’s danger—”
“You swore there wasn’t any danger.”
“Do I look like an oracle? There is always danger—always.”
That wasn’t even the half of it.
“You reek of the gods-damned sewers,” Aedion snapped. “Want to tell me what you were doing there?”
No. Not really.
Aedion rubbed at his face. “Do you understand what it was like to sit on my ass while you were gone? You said two hours. What was I supposed to think?”
“Aedion,” she said as calmly as she could, and pulled off her filthy gloves before taking his broad, callused hand. “I get it. I do.”
“What were you doing that was so important it couldn’t wait a day or two?” His eyes were wide, pleading.
“Scouting.”
“You’re good at this, aren’t you—half truths.”
“One, just because you’re … you, it doesn’t entitle you to information about everything I do. Two—”
“There you go with the lists again.”
She squeezed his hand hard enough to shatter a lesser man’s bones. “If you don’t like my lists, then don’t pick fights with me.”
He stared at her; she stared right back.
Unyielding, unbreakable. They’d been cut from the same cloth.
Aedion loosed a breath and looked at their joined hands—then opened his to examine her scarred palm, crisscrossed with the marks of her vow to Nehemia and the cut she’d made the moment she and Rowan became carranam, their magic joining them in an eternal bond.
“It’s hard not to think all of your scars are my fault.”
Oh. Oh.
It took her a breath or two, but she managed to cock her chin at a devious angle and say, “Please. Half of these scars I rightly deserved.” She showed him a small scar down the inside of her forearm. “See that one? A man in a tavern sliced me open with a bottle after I cheated him in a round of cards and tried to steal his money.”
A choked sound came from him.
“You don’t believe me?”
“Oh, I believe you. I didn’t know you were so bad at cards that you had to resort to cheating.” Aedion chuckled quietly, but the fear lingered.
So she peeled back the collar of her tunic to reveal a thin necklace of scars. “Baba Yellowlegs, Matron of the Yellowlegs Witch-Clan, gave me these when she tried to kill me. I cut off her head, then cut her corpse into little bits, then shoved it all into the oven of her wagon.”
“I wondered who killed Yellowlegs.” She could have embraced him for that sentence alone—for the lack of fear or disgust in those eyes.
She walked to the buffet table and pulled out a bottle of wine from inside the cabinet. “I’m surprised you beasts didn’t drink all my good alcohol these past months.” She frowned at the cabinet. “Looks like one of you got into the brandy.”
“Ren’s grandfather,” Aedion said, tracking her movements from his spot by the window. She opened the bottle of wine and didn’t bother with a glass as she slumped onto the couch and swigged.