Chapter 3 · Pinned

"He's lying," I said again, and the vault threw it back.

The wool had started up. It stopped under my ribs. Torin didn't blink. The inner bolt was thrown. His fingers stayed fisted in the coat. Kaelen was a voice on the wrong side of the iron, and the water was already past my shins. There was no second way out. I had spent the last two breaths proving it.

"Put the light down."

I still had the flashlight. I put the beam in his eyes and kept it there. "No."

"Move it."

"No. He's outside buying a war with a rumor, and you're in here buying the rest of me with a bolt."

"I didn't walk a river to hear a rumor." He stepped off the landing. The catwalk groaned. He was already in the room. The distance had been a courtesy and he was done with it. His hand did not leave the coat. "You cut the bond to an empty pair of boots and a councilman who couldn't remember your name. Don't look at your hands like they don't owe me the truth."

"They don't owe you a future." My throat burned. "Three years, Torin. A house, a title, a bed you didn't sleep in. The pack stood in the rain to watch me reject a man who couldn't spare an hour."

"And you couldn't wait one night."

"Wait for year four? For you to come down off that ridge and notice the chair was pregnant?"

I heard it leave my mouth. I wanted it back. His face changed. Not triumph. Attention. The wool tightened under his fingers.

"Say that part again."

"No."

The flashlight shook. I kept the beam in his eyes so he could not look at my stomach. Outside, the river hit the grate and the room took it in its teeth. I went for the grate instead of the door. Low, under his arm, where the flood was loudest and a body might fit if it did not care about coming back up.

He caught me by the belt and hauled me in. My knees hit iron. His chest came down over my back for one breath, then he turned me and put me upright against the door. The grate stayed behind him. The river stayed behind the grate.

"Don't do that twice," he said.

"Then get out of the only other one."

"No."

"You already knew," I said.

"I knew he salted the bowl." He came the last step in until my shoulders were on the iron and his were the room. "I did not know he had a word for what is under my hand. You're going to give me the real one."

I backed up and there was nowhere. My heel hit the grease. The flashlight left my hand, skittered, died in the water. For a second his face was a black shape with the river in it.

Then his arm was around my waist.

He put me on the iron. Palm flat beside my head, the metal ringing, his chest hot and wet against mine. Rain and cedar and the animal under it. The bolt dug into my shoulder blade. There was no gap left to duck. His other hand was still fisted in the coat, over the stomach, not on the skin.

"Don't," I said.

"You think I chased you to hurt you." Close to my ear. "If I wanted you hurt, I'd have let the river take the road and I wouldn't be here breathing you in."

"You did let me walk."

"I let you stand in my house and be furniture." His forehead touched mine. "That's the thing I'm done doing."

The page crackled in his coat. Article Nine, the line that releases a body and says nothing about a child. I grabbed for it. He caught that wrist and pinned it to the iron over my head. I had the bolt against my palm and not one inch of it was mine.

"You saved the page that doesn't mention a child," he said. "Then you said pregnant. I'm past the paper."

I tried to turn my face away. He didn't let the turn finish. If I lied now, he would feel it. If I told the truth, the child stopped being a thing I could carry to a coast. There was no third sentence. He was waiting in the inch between them.

The bond scar flared. Torn, not gone. He turned his face into my throat and breathed. I had kept the herb under my tongue since before the altar. Six weeks it had held.

"Your scent's wrong." Rough. The wolf close. "Not the herb. Don't spend the lie on the herb."

"It's mountain root—"

"Mountain root smells like dirt and pennies." His mouth stayed at my pulse. "You smell like my line doesn't end with me."

Kaelen hit the iron once, soft. Torin did not turn his head.

"Take the rejection," I said. "It's signed. It's witnessed. You can nail it to the ridge and tell them I lost. Give me the bolt."

"No."

"That is the whole trade. Your pride for this door."

"I didn't walk a flooded road to buy my pride back." His fingers tightened once in the wool, a warning, not a wander. "Kaelen put a child in the air between us. You don't get to pay me with a page and leave the word on his side of the iron."

"He can wait," I said, and heard how thin it was.

"He can wait," he said.

His fist opened. Not mercy. The hand came off the wool and stopped a breath above it, heat through the wet, the last inch he had not spent. I felt that inch worse than the grip. He was going to put it down. He was making me see it coming.

"You don't get the child," I said, and heard myself too late.

The vault went quiet. His palm hung a breath off the coat. Not down. Not gone.

"What child."