Page 36 of Little Witch

She studied my face a moment, something searching in her expression. "You look like you're carrying something that makes you want to scream the word fuck really loud."

I didn't answer right away. She took that as answer enough, apparently, because she slipped out from under the blanket, careful and quiet, and held her hand out to me.

"Come shower with me. I need to actually wake up properly if we're going to talk about whatever this is."

I followed her without argument, easing off the bed slow enough not to disturb Orias, who barely stirred beyond a soft grumble and a shift deeper into the pillow. The bathroom was small, tiled in warm amber tones that matched everything else in this strange place, and the water came on hot the second Amber turned the tap, like the Sanctum had been waiting to provide exactly that too.

She stepped under the spray first, and I followed a moment later, the small space forcing us close together in a way neither of us minded.

I reached for the soap before she could, working up a lather between my palms, and started at her shoulders, working slow circles into skin that had gone tense with everything the day had put her through. She sighed, head tipping back slightly, letting me work down her arms, her back, taking my time with it in a way that had nothing to do with anything except wanting to take care of her properly, for once, without an audience or an agenda.

"That feels incredible," she murmured, eyes closed.

"Good."

I kept going, careful and unhurried, until the tension in her shoulders had mostly melted out under my hands. When I finally turned her to face me, water running down between us, I couldn't help myself. I kissed her, soft this time, nothing like the desperate thing from earlier. Just her mouth against mine, steady, grounding.

She pulled back first, studying my face again with that same searching look from before. "Talk to me, Rowan. Whatever it is."

I exhaled, long and slow, water running down my face while I tried to figure out where to actually start.

"I need to go back to the day I left town," I said. "You never got the real reason. Only the version I gave you the first time, and that wasn't the whole truth."

She stayed quiet, waiting, patient in a way that made the rest of it easier to get out.

"Standing at our mums' funeral, I felt something lock into place. Between us. I'd researched mate bonds once, years earlier, some school project neither of us would remember. I knew exactly what I was feeling the second it hit me, and I knew it wasn't going away." My throat tightened around the next part. "In the same breath, I knew Orias loved you. Had for years, since before either of us understood what that even meant. You loved him back, or I believed you did. I wasn't about to stand there, freshly bonded to the one person my brother wanted more than anything else, and let that be the thing that finally broke what was left of our family. So I left. Told myself distance would fix it."

"Did it?"

"No."

Her breath caught, audible even over the running water. "You've known for years. Not just since you got back to town. This whole time."

"Yes."

"And you never said anything. Not when you first showed up in the woods. Not in that clearing." Hurt sharpened her voice now, quick and immediate. "Does Orias know?"

I hesitated, and the hesitation answered before my mouth caught up. "He worked it out on his own, I think. A while back. He never brought it up either. Or I'm wrong and he has no clue and I think he's smarter than he is."

"You've both known." She shoved a hand back through her wet hair, something raw flickering behind her eyes. "You both decided that was information I didn't get to have. About my own life. About whatever this is that's I... I feel."

"I know it wasn't fair."

"It wasn't." She held my gaze, chest rising fast. "I have every right to be furious about this, Rowan. Both of you keeping something this size from me."

"You do," I agreed, because pretending otherwise would only have made it worse.

She stood there a long moment, water running between us, jaw working like she was cycling through several reactions at once and hadn't landed on the right one. Slowly, some of the anger in her expression started giving way to something else entirely.

"It's also—" A short, disbelieving laugh escaped her. "God, it's also kind of amazing, isn't it? A mate bond. That's not small, Rowan."

"No. It's not."

"And I actually get it. The reasoning." Her voice softened, the fury banking down into something more considered. "If you genuinely believed I loved Orias, and you'd just found out we were bonded, right there at your own mum's funeral of all places — choosing to protect his feelings instead of claiming me for yourself, that's not the worst thing you could've done with that information. It's actually kind of decent, in a stupid, self-sacrificing way I'm still annoyed about."

"I'm sorry," I said, meaning it as completely as I'd ever meant anything. "For leaving. For staying quiet the second I came back."

"I know." She reached up, cupping my jaw the way I'd done to her a dozen times over the last few days. "If we were back home right now, I'd probably still be mad at you for another few days at least. Properly mad. Silent treatment, dramatic sighing, all of it." A small, tired smile broke through. "But we're trapped in a magic tree with my dad and your brother, and I think we've got slightly bigger things to focus on than being mad at you for a secret that came from a decent place. So I'm putting a pin in it. Not letting you off the hook. Just postponing."