FREYA
I did not mean to say it, not here, not like this. I meant to say it on my own terms, calm, with papers drawn and a plan made, the way I decided on the cliff.
I did not mean to throw it at him in a temple courtyard in the heat of a fight like something snatched up off the ground. But it is out now, the whole of it, the thing I have carried since the cliff, and it is out in anger and it cannot go back in.
Eli's face settles into something I have not seen on it before. Not shock. Not hurt. Something almost like grim recognition, a man watching a thing he expected arrive on schedule.
He scoffs. "Why am I not surprised? I should have known it would come to this."
"Eli—"
"Like father, like daughter," he says it without heat now, which is worse. "Cassius walked away from this pack t
