Chapter Five — The Blood That Answered

Troy was already at her stall when she arrived.

No tea this time. He was standing with his back to her watching the crowd, hands in his coat pockets, that slim frame tight in a way she had not seen before. Like something underneath his skin was pulled too close to the surface.

She dropped her basket on the stall. "You look terrible."

"Good morning," he said without turning.

"I am serious. Did you sleep."

"I am fine."

"Troy."

"Tyra." He finally turned and those gold eyes found her face and moved over it quickly. Checking something. Then he relaxed by a fraction. "How are the flowers."

"Same as always." She started arranging her stock, watching him from the corner of her eye. "Why are you here so early."

"I felt like it."

"You always feel like it."

"Is that a problem."

She looked at him. He looked back. That easy unbothered expression that gave nothing away and somehow gave everything away at the same time.

"No," she said finally. "It is not a problem."

She almost meant it.

She turned back to her roses and picked up her trimming knife and started cutting stems. Clean diagonal cuts. Quick and automatic. Troy stood beside her watching the crowd, occasionally shifting his weight, occasionally glancing at her stall like he was keeping count of something.

"The coin," she said without looking up.

"Good morning to you too."

"Troy."

"It is just a coin Tyra."

"The blacksmith on Fenn Street went pale when he saw it." She cut another stem. "Would not touch it. Told me to put it away immediately."

Troy said nothing.

"That is not nothing," she said.

"No," he said quietly. "It is not nothing."

She stopped cutting and looked at him. "Then what is it."

He looked at her for a long moment. That jaw tightening. That careful choosing of words she had come to recognize and dread.

"Some things are better understood slowly," he said.

"That is the most frustrating thing anyone has ever said to me."

"I have said more frustrating things than that."

"Troy I am holding a knife."

The corner of his mouth moved. Just barely. "I noticed."

She turned back to her stems and tried very hard not to smile and mostly succeeded.

She was halfway through the bunch when his phone buzzed.

She felt him go still beside her. The particular stillness that was different from his usual calm. Tighter. Heavier. She kept cutting stems and kept her eyes on her work and listened to him breathe once, controlled and deliberate, before he pocketed the phone without a word.

"Everything alright," she asked.

"Fine," he said.

She looked up at his face.

It was blank.

That careful practiced blank that was worse than any expression because it meant whatever was on that phone was serious enough that he could not afford to let her see his reaction to it.

She opened her mouth.

Then the knife slipped.

It happened in one careless second. Her attention split between the stems and Troy's blank face and the blade caught the inside of her palm sharp and deep. She pulled back with a hiss. Blood came up immediately, bright and fast.

"Hey." Troy turned fast.

"It is fine." She reached for the cloth in her basket. "Just a cut."

"Let me see it."

"Troy it is just—"

He took her hand.

Both of his wrapped around hers, warm and firm, turning her palm up toward the light. She stopped arguing because he was close and his hands were steady and she had nowhere useful to look except his face.

His gold eyes moved over the cut. Something shifted in them. Something she could not name.

"It needs wrapping," she said.

He said nothing.

"Troy. It needs—"

"Look," he said quietly.

She looked down.

The bleeding had slowed.

She watched it happen and could not look away. The cut was closing. Right there in the morning light between their hands, the skin pulling together slowly and neatly like thread being drawn through fabric, until the wound was simply gone.

Smooth skin.

Clean palm.

Not even a mark.

The whole market kept moving around them. Loud and ordinary and completely unaware.

Tyra could not speak.

She looked up from her hand.

Troy was already looking at her.

Not shocked.

Not confused.

His expression was still and serious and full of something that had been sitting there for a long time waiting for this exact moment.

Confirmation.

"You knew," she said. Her voice came out barely above a whisper. "You already knew this would happen."

He said nothing.

"How long." She pulled her hand back slowly. "How long have you known something was different about me."

His jaw tightened.

"Troy." Her voice was steady but her chest was not. "How long."

He looked at her healed palm. Then at her face. And for one single second every wall he had ever built between them dropped completely and what was underneath was raw and tired and heavy with something that looked a great deal like guilt.

"We need to talk," he said. Low and honest and nothing like his usual carefully managed calm. "Tonight. Not here."

She stared at him.

"You have been standing at my stall every morning for weeks," she said. "Bringing me tea I did not ask for. Answering questions with other questions. And now my hand just healed itself in front of both of us and you want to talk tonight."

"Yes," he said.

"Why not right now."

He glanced at the crowd. Then back at her. "Not here."

She searched his face for a long moment.

"Tonight," she said. "You get one chance Troy. One."

He nodded once.

She turned back to her flowers.

Her hands were steady.

She had no idea how.

Two streets away Troy leaned against a wall with his eyes closed.

His wolf was not pacing.

It had gone completely silent inside him the way it went silent before something serious.

She had watched her own hand heal and the first thing she had done was look at his face.

Not at her hand.

At him.

Like she already knew the answers lived there.

She was right.

He looked at Drak's message again.

"Kael leaves tonight. Stand down or stand aside."

Troy pushed off the wall.

Kael was coming.

And Tyra had no idea that the man who had been bringing her tea every morning was the same man who had been sent to make sure she never saw another one.