“I…don’t mean to insult her,” I said carefully. “I just—”

“Don’t you?” he inquired. “Not her, in particular? Or is it necromancers in general you don’t deem worthy of your family?”

I gaped at him. “You didn’t want it to be true, either!”

“Oh, I don’t want to imagine Carmilla with anyone,” he said impatiently, “but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want her to be happy. I just don’t want to have to think about any of the details—and in this particular case, with your father, it seemed fodder for all sorts of awkward possibilities.”

“Awkward?” My spine stiffened. “Are you calling my father awkward?”

“Are you calling him defenseless?” he parried. “If you think she poses such a dangerous threat…”

I squeezed my eyes shut and counted to ten. “I am sure that she would not intentionally hurt him. But—”

“But she’s a necromancer,” he said evenly, “and you wouldn’t want one of those in your family.”

“That is not what I was going to say!”

“Of course not. You’re not an unkind person, are you?” His voice was as smooth as liquid gold, but the air positively boiled around him as he spoke. “You’d turn yourself inside out to protect anyone who asked for help, from my own minions to your worst enemies. You would never want to hurt anyone’s feelings, no matter how little you truly thought of them. Even those old neighbors who burned down your last house—oh, yes, your father told me about that weeks ago. You didn’t even hurt them, did you, Mia?”

“I wasn’t there when they attacked.” My fists clenched as I gritted out the words, memories of fire and fear rising within me. “I couldn’t—”

“Rubbish.” He cut me off with an impatient slice of one elegant hand through the air. “You may have been out of the house when it happened, but I’ve seen your inventions. I know you could have easily destroyed every one of your family’s attackers once you saw what they had done. You could have taken real vengeance.”

“And what good would that have done?” I shouted the words into his enraging face. “Attacking them wouldn’t have made Dad heal any better. It wouldn’t have made them forgive me for being different!”

He grabbed my hands tightly in his, lightning sparking back and forth between us. “You don’t need any forgiveness,” he snapped. “Not from them. Not from anyone!”

“Then why are you so angry?” I demanded.

We were nose to nose now. His breath was hot against my skin. His long-lashed eyes looked dark and wild as he went abruptly still.

My hands were trapped within the cage of his long, cool fingers. I didn’t try to free them. I scarcely even breathed.