Page 35 of Ironhold, Trial Two

“What? I'd see as much of him as you have?” Rowan replies. “I don't think he's interested in me the same way, Lyra.”

“You think that’s all it’s about?” I reply. He sounds jealous, but does he really get to be jealous?

“I know it is, and the only question is whether you're too blind to see it,” Rowan shoots back.

“Rowan, there is nothing going on between me and Alaric.”

He doesn't look as though he believes me. “Really? Because you keep finding him everywhere you go. You keep spending time around him, don't you? Don't tell me you're not flattered by the attention. I get it. The handsome nobleman, not the scarred ex-slave.”

“Why are you so jealous?” I demand. “It isn't as if you've done anything since the last games. You haven't made any kind of move on me except as some kind of casual thing.”

“Maybe casual is all I can manage,” Rowan counters. “Maybe I haven't wanted to get too close because I've known that if I do and you get killed…”

“I thought you said I was getting better, that I had a good chance of surviving?” I snap back at him.

“I'm telling you what you need to hear,” Rowan replies.

“So you're lying to me?”

“For your own good.”

Now it's my turn to be angry because it seems a lot of people have been doing things for my own good recently. The leather bracelet on my wrist is there for that reason. I've been dragged into the spectral covenant the same way. No one seems to trust me to make a choice with all the information. No one seems to want to tell me the truth.

“You don't decide what's good for me and not,” I say. “Just like you don't decide who I talk to, who I spend time around.”

“That's just as well, isn't it?” Rowan says. “Because it seems you're determined to ‘spend time’ with as many people as possible. You get invites up to Ravenna’s rooms to hang out with the nobility. You spend time with this patron of yours. You go off with Alaric.”

Jealousy is not a good look on him, especially when he's insinuating things that haven't happened. He's acting as though I'm sleeping with everyone I meet, when the truth is I haven't even done so with him.

“Why are you so jealous?” I ask him. “I haven’t done anything. I’m just… I’m not even anyone important.”

"Of course, you're someone important," Rowan replies. "Even if you're not sleeping with any of them, you're still the one getting all the attention from the nobles.”

“Is that what this is about?” I ask. “You want the attention? I thought you were only goal was to get through your seasons and get out of here?”

“It is,” Rowan replies.

“So why do you care if someone else is getting the attention in the arena?” That doesn't fit with what he's saying. If his onlygoal is to survive why does it matter if I'm the one the nobles are paying attention to?

“It isn't good for you,” Rowan replies. “You don't know what nobles are like, not really.”

“I've met a few by now,” I point out. Is he really going to treat me as if I don't know how the world works? As if I haven't learned about the schemes and the machinations of the nobles?

“You've met them, but I lived in one of their households for years,” Rowan says.

“Is that what this is about really?” I ask. “About the time you spent with Lady Tyra?”

“It's about the ways they're all the same,” Rowan counters, but I see him wince, and I know that some of my words have hit home. I realize that I’ve gone too far, but it’s already too late to take the words back. “And it's about the fact you can't see that. I had to spend some of today in that receiving room while they ogled me, and I hated every moment of it. But you… when you go off into the city, it's like there's a spring in your step, just because you're getting their attention.”

I can't tell him what's happening when I go into the city. I can't tell him about the spectral covenant, or about the lessons I have been learning. Besides, I shouldn't have to justify myself like that to him. I shouldn't feel guilty about feeling good for getting out of Ironhold for an hour or two.

“I don't care about their attention,” I say.

“Of course you do,” Rowan snaps back. “I see it when we're in the parades and when you've won a fight. You love their adulation. Be honest with me; you don't really want to leave once you’ve survived your seasons, if you survive them, do you?”

“I…” I hesitate. A part of me wants to go straight back home, but there is another part that wants more, that is excited by the possibility of becoming a full citizen of Aetheria. And then there's the things the spectral covenant are doing.

Thinking about it means I hesitate too long.

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