His fingertips brushed against the sensitive skin of my forearm. Just the lightest touch, but it was enough. Enough to send a jolt of awareness through me. Enough to make me flinch.
“Someone hurt you,” he said. Not a question. A simple, cool observation. But there was something beneath it, something heavy and unreadable.
“It’s nothing,” I said too quickly, pulling away before I could think better of it.
He scoffed. “Nothingdoesn’t leave marks.”
I exhaled through my nose, gripping the stem of my wine glass. Careful now. Don’t let this turn into something dangerous.
“Neither does a corset, yet it still strangles,” I muttered, taking a sip.
He tilted his head, watching me like I was a puzzle he had all the time in the world to solve. “That’s deflection.”
“That’s practicality,” I corrected. “We all live under restraints, one way or another.”
His fingers drummed against the table. “Some restraints leave bruises.”
A cold knot twisted in my stomach. His curiosity was sharpening. It was becoming lethal.
I should have shut him out. Should have redirected the conversation, made some cutting remark, and turned his interest into something harmless.
Maybe it was the wine, or the warmth of the fire, or the way his attention felt different—not like a trap, not like a test, but like something else.
And maybe I was tired of being handled, used, dismissed, broken.
So I let it slip.
“I had the misfortune of living under the care of a monster.”
Silence.
I shouldn’t have said it.
“The brother who sent you to St. Dismas,” he said.
I kept my eyes on my plate, waiting for him to move on, to scoff or smirk or let the conversation drift somewhere else.
But he didn’t.
“You were not under his care,” he murmured. “Under his control.”
I stilled.
“Same thing, in the end.”
I expected him to agree, to brush it aside. But something flickered across his expression—not amusement, not mockery.
Something that sent a shiver down my spine.
Nobody had ever stood up for me after my parents were gone. Tilly tried it once. She never spoke of it, but she had a talk with Arthur about it, and she never did it again.
“Not always,” he said.
His voice was low, almost absentminded, but the weight of it settled deep in my chest.
Not always.
I swallowed hard.
