I nodded.
He shifted, staring out at the water. “That person you thought you saw earlier . . . I know it turned out to be nothing, but if it had been, and you’d gone after them . . .”
I frowned at the sunset.
“I know you don’t think the Order will disrupt your search,” he went on, “but what if they’ve heard the union is happening sooner than they thought, and they want to stop it?”
I hadn’t thought of that.
Jack rubbed at the compass tattoo on his forearm. “Maybe we should reconsider letting the Saxons’ people go out in the field instead of you.”
I huffed out a frustrated breath. “We’re not doing that.”
“There might come a point where I don’t think it should be entirely your choice,” he said.
I stared at him. “Excuse me?”
“I don’t mean—I only mean to say your judgment is clouded. For good reason. But—”
“Don’t.”
“Avery—”
“No. I have been very clear about how I feel, and if you can’t respect that, we’re just not going to talk about it anymore.” I turned away from him and hugged my arms around my chest. The last couple times he’d said things like this, I’d tried to make excuses. He was worried. He didn’t really mean it. But it was getting harder to deny that he did mean what he was saying.
I felt him watching me for a second, and he finally said, “I’m going for a walk.”
He disappeared into the cabin. When I was sure he was gone, I made my way inside, too. I heard Elodie and Colette talking in the other room, and I paced the three steps from the bedroom area to the kitchen. I grabbed a handful of dark red cherries from a bowl and sat at the breakfast bar, plucking the stems off them and rolling them around on the counter in little agitated circles. Across the deck, I watched the turquoise water of the Mediterranean turn orange from the setting sun.
“What did that fruit do to you?”
I frowned up at Stellan and then cursed when a cherry squished under my fingers, spraying bloodred juice across the marble and onto the front of my dress.
“Or maybe the better question is, What did Bishop do to you? What was that little fight about?”
It wasn’t a fight, I started to say, wiping at the cherry juice. “I don’t know,” I found myself saying instead, and then added quickly, “It wasn’t a fight. It’s none of your business.”
“Let me guess.” Stellan took one of my cherries and popped it in his mouth. “He’s worried about your safety, etcetera, etcetera.”
I wrinkled my nose. “We weren’t fighting,” I said again. I wanted it to be true. Jack was the one person I was sure I could trust. And if we disagreed so strongly about this, it meant one of two things I didn’t want it to mean. Either I couldn’t trust him as much as I thought—or he was right and I was going about this all wrong.
Stellan leaned on the counter across from me. “He wants to keep you safe. It’s sort of his thing, if you hadn’t noticed.”
I didn’t even bother looking up from my cherries.
“It’s valid,” he continued. “There could be people trying to kill you. And I’ve seen your sparring sessions. You’re not very good.”
I pushed my stool back and stalked across the room for a napkin. “Do you spy on everything I do?”
“You were training on this boat. Anyone with eyes was ‘spying’ on you.” Stellan sat at the table, resting one long arm across the back of the bench.
“I—” I didn’t know what to say in response, because he was right. “Just shut up.”
“If you ever need somebody else to train with,” Stellan said after a minute. “For whatever reason . . .”
“Thanks but no thanks,” I said.
“You know,” he said, “it’s remarkable to me that you are willing to train so much, to come up with all these dangerous, difficult schemes, but you’re not willing to even consider the way the Circle has interpreted the union for centuries.”
I tossed the napkin onto the mutilated fruit. “We’ve actually gotten really far with the clues, if you hadn’t noticed. Either way, I’m not marrying you.”
“Turned down before I could even propose,” Stellan sighed. “You’re going to give a guy a complex.”