I slide off the bed. “Jordan, Elise, I’d like you to leave us now, please.”
“What?” Elise and Jordan both swing to me at once, the agitation in their rapid glances telling me they thought they heard me wrong.
“I need you both to leave this room.”
“I don’t think…” Elise starts, but Jordan is louder.
“That’s not going to happen.”
I say, “Please, Jordan. I need you to do this for me.”
“No,” she says, eyes wide, clearly shocked. “I’m not allowed to leave you alone. I won’t break that rule. I can’t…”
Her shoulders shake and her face suddenly crumbles. “I always follow the rules. Even if I don’t like it. Even if it breaks my heart…” She struggles to regain her composure, but the floodgates have opened and she can’t hold it in. My order has triggered all her emotions. She presses her hand against her heart. “I follow the rules even if it kills me.”
“You’re right,” I say. “You always do the right thing. You didn’t speak to Sebastian when you could have all those mornings you saw him. You didn’t object when he offered me his heartstone, even though it broke your heart. You’ve never once made me feel guilty about it or blamed me for it. You have more integrity than the Elven Command. And that’s why I trust you right now.”
Her eyes brim with tears, her head tipped forward, and shoulders slumped, but she doesn’t budge.
“I won’t force you to break the rules, Jordan. So this is what I’m going to do instead…” I cross my room so that I’m standing just inside the entrance to my bathroom. “You aren’t breaking any rules now, because this is my bathing room. It’s the only place you’re required to leave me alone.”
“The bathing room? Seriously?” She stares at me. Then she covers her mouth with a laugh-sob, swiping at her tears with her other hand. “Oh, Princess…”
She glances at Baelen, who hovers nearby and is definitely as concerned about my intentions as Jordan is. He shakes his head, this great beast of a male looking like he doesn’t want to step in the wrong direction in case he breaks something. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
Baelen’s disquiet seems to have the opposite effect on Jordan. She appears to make a decision. “Okay, then.”
Elise wraps her arms around Jordan’s shoulders and together they leave my bedroom, nudging the door closed behind them.
I signal Baelen to step inside. “Commander Rath, if you will?”
I’m not sure if he’ll follow me, but he crosses the distance with a worried frown on his face. I don’t take any chances. As Baelen clears the door to the bathroom, I close it and press up against it.
He dwarfs the small space. The bath is full of water. There’s nowhere to sit. He can’t seem to decide where he should stand. If I were him, I wouldn’t know either.
The same frown wrinkles his forehead, but he keeps his voice gentle as he says, “Show me, Marbella.”
My hair drapes across the front of my robe, obscuring the damage that lies beneath. I draw it across my neck out of the way and slide the top of the robe across one shoulder, revealing the bruises.
Baelen suddenly vibrates with tension, his Rath heritage surfacing. “I should have killed him. Iwillkill him.”
“I didn’t ask you in here to show you this or to encourage you to seek revenge,” I say.
He pauses, comes back to me, tilts his head, questioning.
I run my eyes across his high cheekbones and the single unruly patch of hair at the side, the curve of his lips, and the cut of his jaw. He is hard and unyielding, never falling even when the other champions came at him with everything they had, but I remember when his lips weren’t pressed in such angry lines. I remember when they were soft and gentle, planting kisses against my throat.
My breath hitches. I try to breathe normally as I take a step forward. He takes a step back, just like he should, except that he’s slow and reluctant.
I say, “I need you to do something for me now that we’re alone.”
His eyes light up and for a second I imagine the light of his heartstone burning inside him. He doesn’t take his eyes off me, running his gaze from my long hair draped across my shoulder, along the arch of my neck, down to the curve at my waist. The edge of my robe splits open at the bottom as I take another step forward, the material falling on either side of my thigh.
He takes another step backward, but there’s nowhere to go now that he’s hard up against the wall.
My heart thumps. I lift my arm. “I need you to take my hand.”
