I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have thought I’d taken my own life because I couldn’t face the Alverac: the contract I’d unwittingly signed in blood, tying my body and spirit to Graysen Crowther. A man who had lied to me. Hurt me in the worst possible way. Thisthingin my chest…it was empty and hollow and yet, at the same time, filled with such raw pain and loathing that itched and scratched.
I wanted to fall to my knees and beg for my freedom.
I wanted to shatter into a million pieces.
I wanted to cry.
Instead, I bowed my head and let my hair drape in front of my face to hide myself. I blinked back the burning heat and rubbed my nose, prickling with oncoming tears.
Though I might not feel the wyrm inside me, that didn’t mean it had gone. I was the wyrm. Its fire breathed throughmyveins and setmyblood on fire. Perhaps a small, slender, tentative flame right now, but it held enough light to remind me who I was.
I wouldn’t beg.
I wouldn’t break.
I wouldn’t let him see me cry.
Straightening, I squared my shoulders and faced him.
Blurred fingerprints, the proof of my rage, slowly faded from Graysen’s reddened cheek. His chest rose and fell with heaving breaths as he paced back and forth, his features tight. He dug his hands through his ash-clumped hair, locks feathering through his widespread fingers. He clenched, tugging hard.
My voice rasped. “Why couldn’t I see my father?”
He had thought I was dead. Perhaps wished I was, now that the Crowthers had captured me and intended to use me to break him.
Graysen’s voice was hoarse and broken, and it startled me. “You know why.”
Of course…
He did it to rattle my father, to tear another hole in his position as Head of all Houses. To put more pressure on him, for whatever the Crowthers needed. Whatever their plans and schemes were for me involved.
Bastard.
Moving in a tight circle, my knotted hair grazed my shoulders as I gave the room a cursory glance. It was big and circular, much like a studio with a free-flowing layout and two inner rooms. And no windows. Not a single one. I frowned. “Where am I?” Air conditioning filtered through metal slats in the vaulted ceiling. As my chest swelled with the intake of air, cedar spiked my lungs.
I let out an exhale of shock.
Graysen’s scent was everywhere.
This was his room. And we’d climbed high, a twist of steps, up, up, up. I was a Wychthorn princess, and he’d locked me away at the top of a tower.
He confirmed it a moment later by replying, “My residence.”
He’d stopped pacing and was staring down at the floor, his large hands, dusted with soot, clenched and unclenched beside his muscular thighs.
Slowly, ever so slowly, my eyes widened as I finally understood. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
His head whipped toward mine. I saw it. A flash of raw turmoil. He looked lost, utterly lost. And then whatever storm was inside of him, he swallowed it back.
He had no idea what he was doing. All of this—stealing me away, imprisoning me in this room. This wasn’t planned at all. His family really had intended to lock me below the Keep in the dungeon. Out of sight, out of mind, I assumed. What the hells was he thinking? What was he doing locking me up here inhisroom?
Either way, it didn’t matter. My wyrm was lost to me, and I couldn’t leave.
“I’m not sleeping here,” I spat, popping a fist on my hip.
A groove deepened between his brows as he stalked closer. “You want to be locked up in the dungeon below the Keep? There’s little light down there. It’s dark and damp and cold.”
“Preferable to being anywhere near you!”
