Page 86 of Iron Beneath the Snow

When his fingers finally brushed the skin just below the bandage, the contact was light.

It was enough.

The mark answered at once—not with the violent surge from before, but with something deeper, slower, a heat that spread inward rather than outward, settling beneath her ribs and along her spine.

She inhaled sharply.

His hand stilled.

“I’m not applying pressure,” he said.

“I know.”

That wasn’t what was happening, and they both knew it.

The reaction had nothing to do with force.

It had everything to do with him.

He continued anyway, his fingers adjusting the loosened bandage with careful precision. The gesture should have been clinical.

It wasn’t.

Her pulse shifted, not in her ears, but somewhere beneath the surface, where the thread between them carried more than it should.

She watched him, the steadiness of his movements only making the denial more obvious.

“You’re still doing it,” she said.

“Doing what?”

“Pretending this is contained.”

That was when he looked at her fully.

“It is contained.”

The certainty came too quickly, too cleanly, and that, more than the words themselves, unsettled her.

“It isn’t,” she said, and now there was less restraint in her voice. “You reacted before I did. Before the blade was even in the air.”

“That is your interpretation.”

She shook her head, no longer attempting to soften the irritation rising through her.

“No. That is what happened.”

Silence stretched between them, no longer neutral. It pressed, demanded an answer, and the longer he withheld one, the less it looked like uncertainty and the more like refusal.

He withdrew his hand slowly, as though even that movement required care.

“You’re injured,” he said. “Your perception—”

“My perception is clear,” she cut in, and this time she didn’t temper the sharpness in her voice. “What I don’t understand is why you insist on denying it.”

His gaze darkened slightly, though it did not waver.

“I am not denying anything.”