But she needed it. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes glinting. “I feel fine. Whatever you did, it’s held.”
“As it should,” he grumbles. “You’re not the first to fight too soon after an injury. Kaelen is the worst for it.”
I find myself watching them both. At the way his body curves over hers, at the way he cups her cheeks, tilting them with a brush of his thumb over her skin. Her eyes dart to mine, cheeks darkening further.
Another thought. Swift, and heated, and gone before I draw my next breath.
I amnotattracted to the witch.
Not in any way.
Impossible.
“She’s coming to dinner tonight. In the hall.” Eres pauses in surprise at my barked words. “Ask Sera to help her. Stay with her for the rest of the day.”
My escape is swift. Brushing off Eldritch’s questions with a muttered excuse about kitchen duties, I jump the fence, almost colliding with Valcor. The rest of the watchers have floated away, called to their own duties, but he lingers, his eyes narrowed on Lyra and Eres in a way that sends unease creeping down myspine. “You’ve managed to tame her, then. Has she told you anything?”
I strongly dislike his tone. But if I tell him she’s Vaelion’s daughter, she won’t survive Nythen’s form of interrogation. “Nothing we can use.”
He sighs. “Pity.”
I’ll have to tell him. It will raise too many questions if I don’t. “She’s attending dinner in the hall tonight.”
At his raised brows, I turn defensive. “She can’t stay in a cell forever.”
“Hardly forever.” He looks her away again. “I’ll let Nythen know.”
Wonderful.
Lyra
“Are you sure this isn’t a problem?” I call the words through the closed door, surveying the bathing chamber I’m currently enclosed in. The iron tub in the middle looks like the one some poor soul dragged down to the prison for me to use, except bigger.
It would have to be, I suppose, to hold the person these rooms belong to.
“Quite sure,” Eres calls back airily. I’d expected him to take me back to my cell to clean up, but instead he brought me here. Not to the rooms I woke up in—quarters he apparently rarely uses, although they’re set aside for him anyway—but to the space he shares with a certain shadow-wielding prince.
For once, the thought of Kaelen Duskbane doesn’t fill me with irritation, although I’d prefer not to think of him at all right now. I continue my exploration. The corner holds a battered-lookingtable, bearing a jug for washing, soap and a variety of cloths hanging from hooks attached to the wall. A cracked looking-glass is propped against the ground, and it’s the only sign of anything beyond basic necessity in the whole room. There’s not much else to see, aside from the chamber pot. I give it a wide berth, preferring to avoidthatfor as long as possible. The one in my cell is bad enough. At least in Solvandyr we have a pipework system.
Everything here is a far cry from Solvandyr, I realize. The Darkwielders live sparsely. Even my own bathing chamber in the Sunspire was more luxurious than this. Duskbane clearly has no thought for fripperies.
My father would have been insulted to step inside this room, let alone be offered its use. My finger traces over a well-used bar of soap, and I breathe in the faint scent. It smells like the fruit I picked this morning—fragrant, a little earthy.
It smells like him. Frowning, I back away as the door knocks. “Yes?”
“Sera is here. She brought some things you might want.”
Sera?
When I open the door to the bedroom, Eres has his arms wrapped around a tall female Darkwielder with short dark hair, murmuring quietly into her ear. She leans into him, her head nestled in the dip of his shoulder. They look… familiar. Intimate, even.
His hand is spread over her back.
My muscles lock me in place. When they don’t look up—as if they haven’t noticed me at all—my breathing deepens. A pounding erupts in my ears, and I feel… unsteady. Off-balance.
Furious.
Moving isn’t a conscious decision. Something propels me forward, something heated and painful and unrecognizable. But ithurts.
