“Yes.”
He sighed again.
So I said, “How’s the castle?”
“You’ve been gone four days.”
“Things can happen in four days. Like… stuff.”
“Stuff?”
“Sure. You know. Things.”
“I’m still going to yell at you, Sam.”
“Dammit,” I said. “Are you sure? Because you don’t sound sure.”
“I tried to tell him no,” Ryan said. “But you know how he gets.”
“Do I ever,” Morgan said.
“Ha, ha,” I said with a scowl. “Are you guys finished? I would like you to be finished.”
“What were you thinking?” Morgan said, sounding slightly pissed.
And that made me angry. “I was thinking that I’m twenty years old and more than capable of handling myself,” I retorted. “I was thinking of the fact that it’s been days since Justin was taken. I was thinking that the quicker we moved, the quicker this would be over and everything could go back to normal.”
“But at what cost?” he asked. “I don’t even want to know how you got away from Dimitri this time. Last time was a fluke. What did you promise him?”
I blanked on that. “Nothing,” I said. “He let us go.”
“What? Why?”
“I asked him to,” I said. “And he did. And then he did his whole cryptic wood fairy thing.”
“You asked the fairy king to let you go and he did,” Morgan said.
“Yeah. He still wanted to marry me, but I convinced him I wasn’t right for him.”
“I don’t even know what to do with you anymore,” he said faintly. “Every time I think I’ve got you figured out or I’m even beginning to scratch the surface, you do something else that just contradicts everything I know.”
“You sound like that’s a good thing,” I said.
“Most of the time,” he agreed. “I don’t know if now is one of those times. I asked you to stay out of the Dark Woods, Sam. I wouldn’t have done so if I didn’t have explicit reasons.”
“Then explicitly explain them.”
“I didn’t think I had to. You killed a Dark wizard. They will want revenge.”
“And that’s it. That’s all it was.”
“Isn’t that enough?” He sounded annoyed.
“You’re not telling me everything,” I said. “And I don’t know why.”
“Even if I wasn’t, it’d be for good reason,” he said. “Not to mention the fact that you have other priorities right now. Not everything concerns you, Sam. You need to focus on the Prince and then getting to Randall. Nothing else. Are we clear?”
“Crystal,” I said. “We’re going to have a long talk later, you and I, about keeping secrets.”