Page 42 of Fierce Highland Magic

"Rowan."

"No," he said.

It was the closest thing to an honest answer he could manage.

Her gaze dropped briefly to his throat.

The pale line beneath his collar had been bright since Lyra's gift. Not the sharp, cold flare of standing spent under the guest-claim. This was something else: a low silver pulse, almost responsive, as though the market had placed a finger against the edge of an old wound and waited to see whether it would open.

It would not.

He would not let it.

"I'm fine," he said.

Lyra gave him a look.

"People who are fine do not generally need to announce it."

"Humans do. Constantly. It is one of your more charming customs."

"You said you weren't human."

"I didn't say that."

"You implied it."

"I implied many things. It keeps conversations lively."

She did not smile.

Unfair.

He had been performing exceptionally well under difficult conditions.

Then he looked at her again and caught the way her hand remained at her collar.

Not touching the pin exactly. Hovering beneath it, as though there were a wound under the wool of her jacket she was afraid to press.

The thistle gleamed silver against dark green fabric.

A coldness moved through him.

He let himself look for one breath too long.

Its leaves curled in the old shape—thorned stem, narrow points, bloom caught half-open as if silver had frozen it in the instant before it fully flowered. The pin should have been a piece of old mortal craft, nothing more. Tarnished. Ordinary. Lost from someone's coat or jewelry box and carried by rain to a road in the Highlands.

But it was not ordinary.

It had never been ordinary.

He knew that.

The knowledge came without a source. A sound behind a sealed door. A name at the edge of a thought that vanished each time he turned toward it.

The thistle had belonged—

No.