Alec was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his head bowed, as though he were in confession. And Lily’s heart pounded with fear for the boy he once was.

She could not stop herself. “What happened after three years?”

He gave a little huff of humorless laughter. “I grew.” Confusion flared as he shook his head and elaborated without looking at her. Telling the story to his hands, large and warm and clasped tightly together. “More than a foot in a few months. Taller than any of them. Broader, too.” He paused, then looked up at her. “It hurts, did you know that? Growing.”

She shook her head. “How?”

That smile again, the one that made her want to hold him until they were old. “Physically. You ache. Like your bones cannot keep up with themselves. But now that you ask, I suppose it hurts in every other way, as well—there’s a keen sense that where you have been is no longer where you are. And certainly nothing like where you are going.” He stopped, then whispered, “Nothing like where I was going.”

“Alec—”

He continued as though she had not spoken, as though, if he stopped, he might not be able to start again. Lily pressed her lips together and willed herself to listen. “They went from judging me, from teasing me, from mocking my very existence . . . to loathing it. Because they could no longer dominate me. Now, I was the one who dominated. I was the—”

She reached for him then. She knew the words that were coming. Had heard them on his lips a dozen times. Her hands clasped his tightly. “Don’t say it. I hate it.”

He met her gaze then, and she saw how much he hated it, as well. “That’s why I have to say it, Lily,” he said softly. “Because it’s apt. Because I am the Scottish Brute.”

She shook her head. “You aren’t, though. I’ve never met a man less so.”

“I broke down a door the first time we met.”

A thrill shot through her at the memory, at the sheer force of his will. “Because you wished to get to me. To protect me.”

For a moment, she thought he would deny it. But instead, he looked deep into her eyes, all honesty. “I did wish to protect you.”

“And you have.”

He looked away, his gaze settling on the stockings draped over the end of her bed, left there before she fled days ago. “I haven’t, though. I’ve never once been able to.”

She threaded her fingers into his, aching for him. “You’re wrong.”

“You’ve had to do it all yourself.”

“No,” she said, forcing him to meet her gaze. “Don’t you see? You’ve given me the power to do it. You’ve given me the strength for it. You wanted to give me freedom? Choice? You have. Again and again. Without you—”

He shook his head, stopping her. “I was a brute, Lily.”

“You weren’t,” she said. “They hurt you. You fought back.”

“Indeed, I fought. Like a damn demon. I wanted them all to know that I was not for their play any longer. That if they came for me, they would risk losing everything.”

She nodded, proud of the boy he had been. Knowing that she should not wish pain upon a group of children, but grateful that he had found a way to win with them. “Good.”

He laughed again, low and humorless, and shook his head. “You won’t think so when you hear the rest.”

He tried to pull his hands from hers, but she wasn’t having it. She clutched him tighter. “No.” He looked up, surprise and something much more unsettling in his eyes. Something like fear. She shook her head. “You are here. And I am with you.”

She saw the words hit him. Saw the deep breath he took in their wake.

Saw him resolve to strike back.

“The boys could not fight me and win,” he said quietly. “And so their sisters finished the work.”

She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and he could sit there until the end of time, watching her. But he loved her too much to keep her, and so he told her the truth, knowing it would drive her away. Knowing it would prove that he was not for her. That she could find another, infinitely better.

You could make her happy, if you decide to do so.

Stanhope’s words were the worst kind of falsehood. The pretty one. The one that tempted enough to ruin a man, and the woman he had vowed to protect. And so, when her brow furrowed in her confusion at his words, he gave them to her again, clearer.

“My school was paid for, but everything else cost money. Food. Drink. Linens. The wash. And the work I had done for it—it was suddenly unavailable; no doubt the cooks and cleaners at the school had been paid well to forget I existed. I could not survive without funds.” The memory of those months, desperate and hungry and angry, lying in the dark, wondering what would come next. “King would sneak me food and put my shirts in his laundry now and then, but I was proud and it felt like—”

“Friendship,” she whispered. “It was friendship.”

It had been. King had always watched for him. But—“It felt like charity.”

She nodded, and he saw the understanding alongside the sadness in her eyes. Alongside the pity. “It is hard to believe we deserve better.”

Did she not see? “Don’t compare us. You were never—”

“What?”

The frustration in the question unlocked him. He stood, forcing her touch from him, unwilling to bear it. Being here, in Lily’s little room, was the worst of it. Every word was wrapped in her, and even as he paced, he was barely able to move—his size reducing the space to a step. Two.

Finally, he stopped, thrusting his hands through his hair. He let out a long breath and said, “Peg came to me when I was fifteen.” He felt her still at the name. At the words. “It was Michaelmas holiday.”

“It is always Michaelmas,” she said, softly, and he did not understand. She did not give him a chance to ask. “Go on.”

“She was the older, very beautiful sister of another boy. I was hiding from the families who had come to visit, telling myself I required study.”

“But you were simply trying to ignore what you did not have yourself.”

He looked to her. “Yes.”

She smiled, small and sad. “I know that well.”

He ignored the comparison. Pressing forward. “She followed me. No one was in the library . . . and then she was.”