That’s alittlesatisfying.
The attic stairs groan under someone’s soft footsteps, and soon, Lady Suri joins us in the narrow attic. She wears a dressing robe over her nightshift, belted tightly against the chill. Her face is unadorned, her hair wrapped in ribbons for tomorrow’s curls.
She holds a lantern in one hand and her jangling key ring in the other.
“Basten? Sabine told me to come. It was all very mysterious. She said it couldn’t wait until the morning. That you need the old attic cell key….oh!”
Her lantern swings wide as she steps into the corridor, the beam slicing through the shadows?—
—and landing square on Rian’s face.
Suri jumps. “What thefuck?” she blurts, then claps a ladylike hand over her mouth to banish the curse.
Rian moves instantly, rising from his crouch behind the bars with unsettling grace. Despite the bruises blotching his face, the split lip, and the swelling around one eye, his smile blooms.
“Well, well,” he drawls. “Lady Suri. What an utter delight. I was worried they’d send some square-shouldered guard with bad breath. But instead…” He rests his bruised knuckles against the bars, eyes glittering. “I get you. Pretty and profane. I’m touched.”
Suri flushes—not deep, just a bloom of heat over her brown cheeks. Her hand goes to her curls, patting down a flyaway ribbon almost unconsciously.
She recovers fast, though, jaw setting hard.
She strides right up to the bars and smacks his injured hand hard with the iron key.
Rian hisses through his teeth, jerking his hand back with a muttered curse. But his grin doesn’t falter. If anything, it widens.
“You ass,” Suri snaps. She shoves the key into the lock and twists, locking him in. “It will be my pleasure watching you wither behind these bars.”
“Pleasure?” Rian says, dark and amused. “Careful. You’ll get my hopes up.”
Suri scoffs, disgusted, and turns away, lantern light throwing her shadow long across the stone as she strides back down the stairs.
“Basten,” she calls over her shoulder, “I’m going to need aseriouspay raise to deal with this.”
Chapter 21
Sabine
Aguard knocks on my bedroom door. “Queen Sabine, the prisoner has asked to speak with you again.”
I’m cross-legged on the bed, bent over a stack of smooth gray pebbles on the quilt, trying to levitate them into a stack with fey alone.
At the interruption, they crash down.
I sigh.
“Not today,” I call to the guard, loud enough to hear through the door. “Oranyday—be sure to tell Rian I said that.”
The guard hesitates. “Yes, Majesty.”
I pick the pebbles up, weighing them in my palm.
Rian has been locked in the Coffin for a week. Brackish water to drink and a pile of hay to sleep in. Like everyone else, I thought he would have broken by now. We’re talking aboutRian Valvere, the privileged lord whose fine ass has rested on velvet pillows his whole life.
But he’s made of tougher stuff than he lets on.
He asks for me daily. Begs for me to speak to him. Basten has gone to the Coffin a few times to press him for information, though I suspect he really just wants to curse him black and blue.And of course, I get reports from Suri on Rian’s aggravating behavior behind bars.
But I can’t bring myself to go.
