He re-formed in the heart of his study, the shadows of the Wren's little sitting room clinging to him like a shroud before dissolving back into the familiar gloom of Mirewood Hall. He had not walked. He had not flown. He had simply ceased to be there and begun to be here, the violent, churning rage in his soul the only bridge between the two places.
She had refused him.
After everything—the warning, the ultimatum, the raw, bleeding confession of his own vulnerability—she had stood her ground. Her pride was a fortress, her defiance a fire he could not extinguish. He had threatened her, promised her, laid a piece of his own tortured soul at her feet, and she had met his gaze and dared him to become her jailer.
The sheer, breathtaking audacity of her was a poison and an antidote, a source of his fury and the only thing that made him feel alive.
