Chapter 11: Your Rule, Your Door

Perrin took the coin back from my hand and closed my fingers over it.

"Keep it," he said. "I'll be on the east road. If I'm dead by Thursday, the Hollow knows where the rest is."

"What rest?"

"You'll remember." He pulled his collar higher. "Or he will."

He was gone before I understood who he meant.

I stood in the grate with the gold crow in my fist and a man's drowned hands in my head.

The thread in my wrist gave a hard tug.

Footsteps came down the tunnel behind me, fast, and the lantern shook in my hand.

Cassian stepped out of the dark.

He was breathing hard, with the Fallen knife still tucked in his belt and rain in his hair.

"You went without me," he said.

"I went without you because I didn't want you in the room."

My voice cracked.

"A man is dead. He sold one knife to a woman in a hood."

"And they tied his hands and put him in the river."

"I know. I felt it in your chest the moment he told you."

"Stop saying that."

"Saying what?"

"That you feel me. That you know me."

I shoved him in the sternum, and he let me.

"You know everything and I know nothing."

"You stand there with all of it, and I'm supposed to be grateful you're being kind."

"I'm not asking you to be grateful."

"Then what are you asking?"

"Nothing," he said. "I'm not asking for a single thing."

I hit him again. Harder.

He caught my wrists.

Both of them. Gently, but without letting go. His thumb slid over the ring, and every muscle in my body went loose.

"Your rule," I said, shaking. "Your door. Isn't that what you said?"

"Yes."

"You don't touch my wrist."

"No."

"You're touching it."

"Tell me to stop," he said, very low. "Say it, and I will."

I looked up at him.

He was soaked, and furious, and wrecked.

There was an alcove in the passage a few paces back, with a stone bench and a pile of old blankets.

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