"No." It's not a snipe. It's so flat as to almost be apologetic, staring at his hair in the darkness as he shook his head, listening to a quiet desperation she hoped never to hear from him. Not here, and not for her, and not as necessity to himself.

Marian took a breath in, pushing it right back out her nose and making her shoulders, in the span of his hands, sink slowly down from ram rod straight. The exhaustion of hours wearing through, the shock of him knowing bleeding off it's first staggering blow. "You cannot keep me out of my own life."

Because they are calling it two different things, that it is, with only one foundation to their word now.

And if Robin and her father never could stop her?

And if it did involve her father so far below, a week unknown?