“He was just leaving.”

“I was?” Fang chuckled when she scowled at him. He kept his back to me as he adjusted Olivianna’s skirts and his tight britches. “Fine, I was.”

He then stalked past me with a fiendish grin and sang, “Be sure to talk all about me.”

Olivianna rolled her eyes but smiled at his back.

I watched him go, looking at Olivianna when the door closed. “I’m sorry.”

The talented seamstress waved her hand dismissively. “Don’t be. The commander is but a lovely pest I can’t seem to force myself to be rid of. You did me a favor.”

I withheld a smile. “A pest?”

Olivianna made a face—an expression that said she was at a loss for what else to say—and gestured to the chaise. “Sit, we need tea.” She then disappeared through a door behind her into a dark room.

I sat and listened to the clang of teaspoons and teacups, wondering what I’d just walked in on. Though, if her remark and reaction were anything to go by, it would seem Olivianna might often find herself wondering the same thing.

The word pest suggested Fang was a frequent visitor to Olivianna’s home and place of business. I smiled down at my hands in my lap, glad for it if it brought her happiness after seemingly being let down by love before with little Ryon’s father.

Olivianna soon reappeared and placed a floral spotted cup of tea upon the table. “Dare I ask if you and the angry beast have resolved things?”

She evidently no longer wished to talk of her own situation with one of Vordane’s commanders, so I thanked her and wiggled aside so that she could join me on the chaise. “Enough for now, I suppose.”

“You suppose?”

Indeed, there was much to still be discussed with Scythe, and although the terror of it all made my chest constrict, I knew I would need to tell him everything in order for us to figure out how this would work. For us to figure out if it could truly work, or if we were merely on borrowed time once again.

Rorn would never release me from our marriage. Scythe had vowed to never lose me.

It all seemed… irrevocably impossible.

So much so, I could hardly stand to think of what might lay ahead. But hiding the extent of the truth for too long would not help matters. It was time Scythe knew all of it.

And perhaps once he did, he would not be so desperate to make sure I stayed. I was tempted to snort as I imagined being thrown out of his cottage, my beautiful gowns of which I’d come to collect tossed to the grass after me before my beast slammed the door.