Which I wouldn’t receive because at the end of the day, I was a prisoner.
“Ifthose parameters shift over time, though, I will inform you,” she said, a hint in her tone that implied certain freedoms might be earned. If I was a good pet. Amelia passed me over a business card. “And this is my business line, with my private number written on the back. If you have any questions, need anything, please contact me.”
That was a dismissal if anything was. I took the card. “Thanks.”
“Do you need help finding your way back?” she asked.
“Nah, I’ve got it,” I murmured, even though the dread started to creep back in.
With that, Amelia turned and exited the room, the double doors swinging in her wake. I watched the shift of them, and my heart thudded hard.
The fluorescent lights beamed down on me, the stainless-steel fixtures and backsplashes gray and cold, and a chill settled inside me, spreading with rapidity.
While I might’ve clung to the brief notion for a few moments that my time here wouldn’t be intolerable, the truth was, I remained confined. I remained a prisoner.
And the culprit, at the end of the day, was Cillian Ashmore.
Chapter 6
The days bled together after I arrived, and yet Cillian didn’t summon me for tasks, for meetings, for damn well anything. If I were working for him, doing some tasks at least, I could distract myself from my current reality. This inertia was worse. A week had passed since I’d ended up here, and I’d expected far more work. Instead, I’d pored through books on my phone to escape, and Amelia had delivered an entire new wardrobe of clothing that was surprisingly close to my style as well as other toiletries I didn’t have. So I wasn’t without comforts.
Yet I was still confined.
I’d emailed the library my resignation, saying I’d taken a private position elsewhere, but I loathed that my favorite job had been stolen from me.
And I’d emailed my father, who at least checked in on me. A small relief I clutched onto.
Amelia had given me a layout of the areas within the Spires, including the higher floors I could access by staircase. Theelevator was off-limits to me, a reality that made me angrier by the day, yet my rage melded with a numbness that threatened to consume me. I’d been trying to find anywhere with a balcony and a breeze here, and while stepping out to look over Peregrine City offered a transitory sense of freedom, the second I stepped back inside, my reality settled back in again.
I nudged the book at the base of my bed with my foot. It had appeared on my nightstand a few days ago—Songs of Whimsy and Witchery—and the read had been fascinating. Old poetry collated from all different time periods about witches. The flip between what we knew pre-Awakening and the poetry from after offered a beautiful contrast. Certainly nothing I ever would’ve read in my hometown.
Oddly enough, once the veil was undone, the whimsy faded from the poems, leaving the stark, bitter reality of the struggles in their history. I’d been reading the mysterious book in chunks, savoring the passages.
A knock sounded on my door.
I peeled myself off the bed.
Amelia waited in the doorway. “Your presence has been requested for dinner tonight.”
I lifted an eyebrow and crossed my arms. “Is this in an official capacity?” If he’d wanted me to work, fine. But dine with him? Fuck that guy.
Amelia’s mouth twitched. “Well, I could tell him you declined, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“Oh, is he going to call his thug over to drag me out of the room?” I shot back. Apparently my sass was the one thing that hadn’t been stolen from me.
“We could, if that’s what you’d like,” Amelia responded coolly.
I swallowed hard. She wasn’t the enemy here, not really. Cillian was responsible for my captivity. “When is this dinner?”
“It’ll be starting in thirty minutes, down in the dining hall,” she said. “We’ll all be there as well.”
Her answer settled it for me, as I was going out of my mind in isolation. If Cillian wanted to force me into interacting, he could deal with my salty self. “Fine.” I huffed out a breath and strode over to the wardrobe, not bothering to wait for Amelia to leave. She’d vanish on her own, the same way she usually did when she needed to update me or deliver something.
I slid on a pair of brown trousers, nice black shoes, and a tan button-up shirt. My hair was a mess, my curls unkempt, so I went to the bathroom and sprayed some product in, taming them until they were ringlets again. I didn’t know why I put in the effort—maybe because I was getting to at least be around people again—but the oppositional tug to show up in the same clothes I’d been wearing and looking unkempt also rose in me.
I sucked in a sharp breath and slid my phone into my pocket, a reflex more than anything. I felt so distanced from anyone on the outside at this point that the connection my phone offered didn’t feel genuine. I craved face-to-face interaction. Shocking for an introvert, but at the library I’d been used to the interspersion of helping patrons find their next reads even if I wasn’t too social in my daily life beyond that.
Time to go face down this new employer of mine.
