For the first time since stepping foot out of the sea, Callik looked annoyed. Not outright, of course. He was too kind-hearted for that. He was trying – she could see the concentration on his face – to tamp down those wayward, negative feelings. But it was right there, simmering below the surface. Just waiting to be called forth.
For her part, she tried not to let the anticipation of a fight get under her skin. But her canines’ prickled with it, as though she were readying them to tear the throat out of an enemy.
But he wasn’t an enemy. He was Callik.
Her oldest friend.
Not that such a thing would stop her from goading him into an argument.
“I have never said anything about grievances,” he said, the vowels so crisp in their mother tongue that she could have broken them in half li
