He looked at her pleadingly and Kestrel had half a mind to grab the nearest pint and chuck it in his face. For almost two decades he’d been lying to her.Two decades!It would take a lot more than his big sad eyes to earn back her trust now.
“Why?” The word broke free from her before she even knew she was asking it. “Why did you lie to me? And don’t tell me you didn’t—because you did! You made me believe there was nothing out here. That the realm was all but gone. That there was no one left. And I want to know why—Ideserveto know why.”
Thom’s hand still remained extended toward her. Those night-sky eyes of his flicked to the door. “Please just come outside, and I promise I will tell you everything.”
“Tell me here.”
“Some of what I have to tell you isn’t safe to be told here,” he growled, glancing suspiciously around the room.
But Kestrel would not be budged. She clutched onto her rage tighter. Let it bolster her. “According to you, it’s not safe anywhere. How am I supposed to believe you when all you do is lie to me?”
“Kestrel, I?—”
“You kept me away from everyone and everything, for nineteen years! I was locked away in some tower, foolishly believing that?—”
“That’s enough!” The veins at his temples bulged with each syllable of his booming voice.
Never had Kestrel seen him angrier. She had said too much; their tower had been a secret that only the two of them had known about. Another one of his senseless rules.
Kestrel was done hiding. Let the world know everything there was to know about them and the life they had led.
“Tell me why.” Kestrel enunciated each word, her voice surprisingly firm despite the way every bone in her body trembled. “Why did you lie to me?”
Thom heaved a heavy sigh. “Everything I did, I did to protect you.”
“Protect me from what? I made it here just fine. All on my own. No bumps, bruises, or scrapes.” For the first time, he seemed to truly look at her. His careful gaze ran over every inch of her, noting the torn knee of her trousers, her parched lips, and the raw, burnt skin on her forehead. “Alright, fine. So I’m not completely unscathed. But I feel like that’s to be expected from someone who was never taught to survive out here, so I did the best I could.”
And already, she was learning. Adapting. Next time she ventured into the desert, she would do better. She would prove it to him.
Thom smiled sadly. But the pride Kestrel thought he would have for her withered beneath the wrinkles of his brow, under the scar over his eye.
“You did well, Little Fury,” Thom said. “But I’m afraid it’s more complicated than surviving a few days on your own in the middle of nowhere. There are things you don’t know yet about the Wild—” He stopped himself then, reconsidering his choice of words as if he actually did want to be honest with her. “There are things you don’t know yet aboutGrimtol, about why we live the way we do. Things you’re not ready to hear yet.”
There was a sharp pinch where Kestrel’s heart belonged.
How could he still think her unworthy of the truth? Here she was, practically begging him for answers, to let her in on all the secrets he’d been keeping from her, and he was telling her she wasn’t ready.
Kestrel opened her mouth, prepared to insist that he couldn’t continue keeping her in the dark, when a commanding voice rumbled from behind her.
“Maybe you need to clean out your ears, Old Man. The lady already told you: she’s quite ready to hear thesethingsyou’re alluding to.”
The tavern muttered, their confusion at this new person to enter the conversation apparent. But Kestrel recognized his voice instantly.
She spun around to find Leighton standing in the tavern doorway flanked on either side by a hooded figure—likely Micah and Efrem, though it was difficult to tellsince both of their faces were shrouded behind fabric that left only their eyes showing.
Leighton, however, had already lowered his face covering and hood. And as the tavern collectively drew in a breath, those crystal blue eyes of his bored into her own and seemed to say,I’ve got you.
Once again, his impeccable timing had saved her.
“It seems to me—” he continued, striding across the tavern with his cloaked friends falling in line behind him “—that you’re the one not ready to admit the truth.”
When Leighton stopped and stood beside her, Kestrel swore she had never felt safer in her whole life.
But something in Thom snapped. “What are you doing here? Get away from her!” There was a panic in his tone that frightened her. Something primal and unbound. Thom glared between Leighton, the hooded figures, and then his wrathful gaze finally settled upon her. “What did you do?”
She couldn’t believe he was still blaming her for everything.
Just to piss him off, she said, “I ignored your advice for once, and I made some friends.”
