The Children of the Harbinger.
He knew I’d lied to his aunt when she asked me what I knew of him.
“I’ll answer a question for an answer from you,” he offered.
Swallowing thickly, I agreed with a nod. There was nothing to lose and everything to gain.
I pushed off, needing distance from him, and headed toward the spiral staircase, curious about the mezzanine level. Sage came out from between the rows of bookshelves to join me.
“The Keep grew throughout the centuries. And when it got big enough, my ancestors changed this space to the library,” I heard him say.
“Your family lives above this?” I asked eagerly, half-twisting around as I climbed the first step.
He nodded. Then, before I could ask, he said. “No. My family’s residences are off-limits to you.”
I rolled my eyes, halting to shift my body to face him. I flicked the tail end of my braid over a shoulder. “Scared I might slit their throats in the middle of the night?”
“Highly doubtful you’d get close enough to do so,” he replied as he brushed by, ascending the spiral staircase ahead of me, two steps at a time. After a short climb, I stepped onto the mezzanine. There were comfy couches and armchairs arranged beside the stained-glass window. I padded across velvet-soft sheepskin rugs and around a coffee table with old-fashioned Art Deco lamps curving over bean bags. The books here seemed different from the ones below. Like the library below, these walls were covered with them too, and there was even a narrow ladder set up to reach the novels on higher shelves.
Looking at the romantic script along the spines in gold and silver, I realized what kinds of books these were.
Graysen moved closer and rested a hand on the edge of the bookshelf. “My mother devoured romance novels. These are mostly hers.” My eyes flared wide. The romance section was huge. I glanced at him, surprised, and perhaps not so. “This was my mother’s favorite place to retreat, aside from the garden,” he murmured before shifting along the mahogany bookcase to peruse the titles, leaving me alone to do the same.
There were a lot of romance books here, and judging by the first one I pulled from the shelf, Tabitha Crowther and I shared the same love for heated romances. It had a brawny, bearded guy with tattoos all over his chest and muscular arms. He scowleddown at a scantily clad woman, their lips ghosting one another. It practically screamed erotica and dark romance with a filthy-mouthed antihero.
I glanced from beneath my lashes at the villain standing in front of me.
Graysen leaned his shoulder against the bookcase, one ankle crossed over the other, as he casually flicked through a book. That filthy, abrasive mouth puckered in disgust as he rolled his eyes at something he read.
Light glinted and spun away from the silver chains and leather bound around his wrist as he unconsciously lifted a hand to drag his fingers through his messy hair. I leisurely drank in the ink swirling upward to curve beneath the jawline on one side of his throat. And as if he felt my attention, his piercing gaze snapped up to meet mine, and he smiled.
I forced back the electric shiver that desired to roll through my body.
It was far too tempting to slap the lazy smirk right off his stupidly beautiful mouth.
The problem with us being cooped up in his tower together was that I was slowly getting to know him. I had been and still was furious with him. I wanted to kill him for what he’d done to me. But somehow that fire of hatred was dampening with learning about him, piece by piece, day by day, and seeing another side to him.
We hadn’t really talked.
Ever.
Not in all the time we spent together this past year. We’d merely put up with one another’s unwelcome presence in comfortable silence, occasionally snipping and snarling at each other. But we’d never had a proper conversation with each other, and that continued up in the tower.
While I was snapping at him, or chanting at him to free me, he’d mostly remained silent.
But that was something I couldn’t afford to do any longer if I wanted to bend him to my need—which was to set me free.
I had to know my enemy.
And I had been watching and learning, but what I’d noted were the things he’ddonefor me, his actions. He talked to me in other ways.
Graysen had been considerate of Sage. He’d brought my friend to me when he knew I needed one most. He’d given a box of toys to Sage and made sure my wraith-wolf had water and mangy chicken carcasses every morning and evening. Though it was a closet, for fuck’s sake, I had my own bedroom and private space, when he could have so easily gone with his family’s plan and trapped me in darkness below the Keep. Down there, with my fear of the dark, I would have shattered and broken.
There were other things he did too, like when he moved the armchair for me onto the balcony without being asked. Or there was always a glass of water within reach or something to snack on that he knew I liked, and he made sure there was honey for my tea rather than sugar.
But we hadn’t ever talked as other people did. Over the course of my sister’s engagement to Corné Pellan, we didn’t chat as we’d grown together. We hadn’t exchanged dialogue with everyday normal conversation in how a boy meets a girl in the usual sense, with both getting to know one another through trivial information.
But I reminded myself, Graysen and I weren’t normal. There had never been anything normal about our relationship. Ever.
