Isolde's Fury

Isolde didn’t knock.

She had spent four days deciding whether she would, and the deciding itself told her the answer. A woman who still meant to be civil about this would have sent Garrick ahead with word. Instead she crossed the corridor to Thane’s study in the dead hour after the household had gone to bed. She pushed the door open on a man bent over a map of the eastern passes with a single candle for company, and let him see how little warning she’d bothered to give him.

He straightened slowly, the way a man does when he’s decided sudden movement will only make whatever’s coming worse. “Isolde—“

“You don’t have that either, not tonight.” Her voice came out colder than she’d rehearsed it, which surprised her, because she’d rehearsed it a great deal. “General. I find I’ve had four days to sit with what you told me,…