I dropped my forehead to his shoulder. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah, course.”

“There’s no going back to how it was before, is there?”

He was silent for a long time. I stayed pressed against him, soaking up his warmth, counting his heartbeats to keep the gift at bay. A man needs his privacy. “Hell,” he said. “That’s how you see this falling out?”

“I don’t know.”

He edged away from me. He ran his fingers through my hair as he passed by, but still, he was on one side of the room, and I was on the other. I had landed on a mine. “Look, Ariah, I told you back in Alamadour how it was with me. We been at this now for years, living like we’re the ones married for two years. Yeah. There’s no going back. I’ll not begrudge you what you want, I’ll not try and trap you, but yeah, I can’t go back to sharing a blanket and hoping, not when we’ve been living like this.”

“Even though you’re so red?” I asked.

He laughed. He crossed his arms against his chest and stared down at his feet. “I mean, yeah. Sharing is one thing, and rejection’s another.” He sighed. He looked over and caught my eye. He had a hardness to him in that moment, an untouchable strength. I’d seen him look at Dirva that way, and it shook me when he looked at me that way. “Can I ask you something, Ariah?”

“Yes.”

“What’s this been to you? You been treading water with me? Am I a placeholder?”

“No,” I said. I stood up and made it to the middle of the room before I froze again. “No. No, this is…No, Sorcha, I love you. I’m…” I blushed, and I lost my nerve, and I turned away. “I’m in love with you. I don’t say it enough, I know that. I’m sorry. You’re not a placeholder. Everything leading up to you was the placeholder.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. I swear. Yes.”

“Then why are you so fucking convinced all that’s just going to evaporate as soon as you’re in the same room with Shayat?”

“Because…because I’m not red.”

He laughed. It was a genuine laugh, a warm laugh. It helped clear the air between us. “You know, you always say that, but from where I’m standing you just get redder every day. Whatever you are now, you sure as hell aren’t silver.”

“Only skin deep, I guess.”

“Like Da,” he said.