and I was glad I hadn’t taken a sip of my mocha or I would have choked on it.
My lady? Had we suddenly been transported back to the middle ages? But no, somehow I didn’t think they had Starbucks back then.
Ethan turned a pleading look on me. “Dana, it’s very important. Believe me, I wouldn’t be risking a Knight’s wrath if it weren’t.”
I sure didn’t want to talk to him at the moment. In fact, I was pretty sure I never wanted to talk to him again. But I doubted I’d be able to sleep at night if I didn’t hear whatever it was Ethan had to tell me.
“All right,” I said.
Finn guided me to a couple of comfy seats in the corner. There was a human woman—probably a tourist, based on the I ? AVALON T-shirt she was wearing—in one of those chairs. Finn didn’t even have to say a word to intimidate her into vacating the seat. I looked up at him.
“You’re kind of a jerk, you know. She was there first.”
Finn gave no indication that he’d even heard my rebuke, much less taken it to heart, but Ethan had a coughing fit that I suspected wasn’t coughing at all.
I sat down in the chair that had been vacant all along and let Ethan take the tourist-lady’s chair. Finn moved away to hover by the door, and I felt absurdly grateful for the distance.
I tried to be cool and expressionless as I sipped my mocha and focused my gaze just beyond Ethan’s left shoulder instead of on his face.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and it was so inadequate I immediately lost that cool and expressionless look I’d been going for. For a moment, I seriously considered giving him a hot mocha facial. He shook his head before I could tell him where to shove his apology.
“That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said. “I just wanted to say it, even though I know it doesn’t make anything better, and even though you probably don’t believe me.”
“You’re right; I don’t.” I took another sip of my mocha, and noticed my hand was shaking. I was keeping the pain tightly contained, but it wouldn’t take much for it to burst out of my skin, and I refused to be responsible for what happened when it did.
Ethan took a deep breath, as though he were the one who was hurting. “Before I tell you what I need to tell you, I want you to know that I would never, ever have let any harm come to you.”
Oh, crap. This didn’t sound good at all. I decided maybe I’d better put my mocha down, because if my hand shook any harder I’d be wearing it. My hands clenched into fists, and I looked at Ethan with what I’m sure was an expression of pure dread. The fact that he looked just as bad as I felt did not bode well.
“It’s about the Spriggan attack,” he said. “I know Kimber told you they were after me, and she truly did believe that. She wasn’t in on it.”
“In on what?” I asked, my voice so faint I was surprised he could hear me.
Ethan let out a heavy sigh. “The Spriggan attack.”
I swallowed on a dry throat. “Kimber wasn’t in on the Spriggan attack. Meaning you were.” Because there was no other way to interpret his words.
He grimaced. “Yes. Sort of. But it wasn’t supposed to be like that.”
I’ll give Ethan one thing: he had the courage to look me in the eye when he told me just how much of a bastard he’d been.
“I was supposed to win you over to our side,” Ethan said. “My father’s side, that is. I wanted you to be grateful to me, and not just for getting you out of Grace’s clutches.”
“So you arranged for me to be attacked?” I asked, my voice an unflattering squeak. “You let those creatures hurt your friends? They could have been killed!” I leapt to my feet, but Ethan reached out to grab my arm.
“Let me finish,” he said.
The cameo heated, and the nasty prickling started again. I saw Finn coming toward us. But if I let him interfere now, I might never hear the whole story. And no matter how much it hurt, I needed to know the whole story.
I sat down with a thud. Ethan let go of me, and I waved Finn off. Once more, the prickling stopped and the cameo cooled. It had to have