"It is relevant," I say. "It is completely relevant. It is my sister, Varder. It is the person who just stood over my bed with a knife. It is relevant in every possible way."
He looks at me. The expression on his face is — complicated. Not guilt exactly, though there is something in the neighborhood of it. More like the expression of a man who has done something and has not fully reckoned with the cost of it and is now reckoning.
"I should have told you," he says.
"Yes," I say. "You should have."
"I made a decision that it was in the past and therefore not—"
"You made a decision about what I needed to know," I say. "Again. You did this this morning, with the rumor, and now this." My voice is very even. "You keep deciding what I am allowed to know about my own life and you dress it up as management or protection or it being in the past and it is none of those things. It is you deciding that your comfort matters more than my information."
