Wrath reached out into thin air, intent on finding her shoulder—but he got the position wrong, his hand bumping into her biceps. “What’s going on.”
When she didn’t answer, he got his phone front and center. “We can call Jane and Manny right now, if it’ll make you feel better? I don’t care if it pisses him off.” Still silence. “Fine, I’ll call, right now—”
“You want to know what would make me feel better? Youreallywant to know?”
“Fuck, yeah. Anything, what do you need me to do?”
“Don’t lie to me,” she said in a low, utterly clear voice. “That would be great.”
Grinding his molars, Wrath went over to the study’s double doors and silently closed them. “Listen,leelan—”
“Don’t leave our home, and tell me you’re going to the Audience House, like it’s business as usual. Don’t feed me a line of bullshit like that, when you’re really going out into the field.”
Behind his wraparounds, Wrath closed his eyes. “Let’s go downstairs.”
“Why? So our son doesn’t hear? He’s passed out on the floor in front of the fire because exhaustion and injury have done what nothing else can. I’ve seen this before. Nothing short of a bomb going off will wake him.”
“Nice choice of words,” he shot back. “And I didnotgo out to fight—”
“Yes, you did.”
“I went to a private home—”
“Oh, you mean like the one that exploded when you opened a door thirty years ago? Like that? Byallmeans, talk to me some more about where you went tonight, it’s totally not digging you into an even deeper hole.”
As his temper curled in his gut, he told himself to calm the fuck down. “It’s not what you think, not at all—”
“Well, I guess the details are a need-to-know kind of thing, so yes, please, keep them to yourself. And no, none of your boys told me—they didn’t have to. I went to the Audience House to bring you something, and none of you were there. Not home, not there—so I checked in at the training center. Not there, either, and I couldn’t find Tohr, who never leaves your side. Where were you all?”
Wrath dragged a hand through his hair and felt like ripping the shit off his goddamn head. “I had to go to—”
“I don’t care. But I will tell you that you should do yourself a favor—don’t pull that again with me.” She muttered a couple of choice words under her breath. “I’m going home now, and you can do whatever you want. God knows, that’s the way you operate—”
He caught her arm. “I didnotgo out to fight. That was our agreement.”
“You think you’re going to skate on a technicality? Really? The field iseverywherein Caldwell.”
“I was protected—”
“You still lied to me. Youpromisedme you were not going to endanger your—”
“There’s a plotagainstmy life, Beth.” He jacked over his hips. “I had to go to the asshole’s house because we can’t find him, and my guard was with me. You remember them, the ones with the fucking black daggers?”
“You think it’s going to help me that you went to a traitor’s ownhome?” Beth took her arm away and laughed harshly. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? And um,no, you don’t get to throw this back on me. You made the choice when you left our home tonight, and I’m allowed to feel angry.”
Tamping down on his volume, he gritted out, “Because I went, because of me, we now have a lead on what was a very cold trail.”
“Hope it was worth it.”
Goddamn it, he could practically see her taking one last, lingering look at the study doors… before she started back down the stairs at a fast clip, her arms wrapped around her torso, her dark hair streaming behind her.
“Fuck.”
His feet started moving before he gave them the command, and he grabbed on to the balustrade so he could go quicker. At the bottom, he tripped as the marble floor arrived sooner than he’d anticipated—then again, his concentration was on hisshellan, not the information his remaining senses were feeding him. Rushing forward, he got to the vestibule just as the door was closing behind her.
As Wrath broke out into the night, the wind caught his waist-length hair and yanked his head to the side. “Beth!”
But she’d already dematerialized away from him.
