Jade exhaled twice more before returning to face Nicolas. “I think you’ve killed all the good stuff, too.”
He cracked a smile as he disposed of the cloth and readied the needle and thread. “This may not hurt as much, comparatively.”
Jade sat straighter, though her hands remained in tight fists in her lap. Nicolas grasped the back of her left upper arm to hold it steady, the pressure of his fingers delicate enough that Jade could pull her arm away if she wanted. The touch of his warm fingertips on her bare skin sent goosebumps rippling down her arms.
He leaned in close to the injury, and his body heat radiated off him in intoxicating waves. With squinted eyes, he studied her wound, preparing tomake the first stitch. From this angle, Jade looked down at him, something she had never done before. He appeared younger in this moment, his face not quite as hardened. Dark lashes flickered with the movement of his eyes, and Jade was struck with a wild desire to run a hand through his thick hair.
“Talk to me,” she blurted out as he brought the needle to her skin. “Take my mind off it.”
To Nicolas, of course, she failed to identify whatitshe referred to.
“Okay,” he said, drawing out the word as his eyes lifted to her. Dark stubble shadowed his jaw. Jade imagined the roughness of it under her palm.
She pushed the thought aside as quickly as it had come, and she met his gaze instead, though that was no better.
“What were you doing at Lesseine?” he asked.
His question effectively eliminated all other thoughts from her mind. Jade narrowed her eyes at him. “I could ask you the same thing. I did, in fact.”
“Making sure you didn’t get into any trouble,” he answered without hesitation, returning his focus to her injury. “Which was clearly the right call.”
The needle stabbed into Jade’s skin, sending a streak of fire through her wound. She inhaled sharply and her eyelids snapped shut, but she breathed through the pain and soon returned her mind to their conversation. She needed answers from him.
“How did you even know I was going there?”
“I saw you saddle the horse.”
Another stab of the needle. Somehow, it hurt marginally less than before.
“And you followed me on foot to Lesseine?”
Nicolas glanced up at her. “I never said I only had one horse.”
He pulled at the stitch, the tight, inflamed skin screaming in protest. Jade pushed the ball of her foot into the floor.
“Now it’s your turn to answer my question,” he said simply with another jab.
Jade cleared her throat. She had to decide in that moment how much she wanted to tell him. She claimed to trust him, but she hadn’t shared everything she knew with him. The letter from Arthur to Arabella still remained a secret, so perhaps this should too.
But if she truly believed him—that he was doing all this to see the true heir established as king and bring a swift end to this conflict, same as her—why was she withholding information? Was it because she had yet to see how he was handling any of it? He’d said he would use her information to bring down Lord Grannam, but as far as she was aware, nothing had happened to him.
Jade decided to start small and see where the conversation led before she revealed all. “You told me to turn my focus to Lady Arabella. So I did.”
“What was your plan?”
Her mouth went dry. “I was searching through her morning room and library to see if I could find any kind of evidence...” She took a beat to figure out the end of her sentence. “To take her out of contention. If we can get both her and Lord Grannam out of this, it should effectively bring the conflict to an end. The only other living contender is Lord Marchand, and his claim is too weak to prevail over Prince Reynauld.”
“Hmmm.” Nicolas kept his eyes zeroed on in his work as he jabbed and pulled and jabbed again. His lack of response made Jade wonder if he knew she was keeping things from him. He said nothing in reply, though, and continued. “So how did you end up in Reynauld’s sitting room if you were there looking for evidence on Arabella?”
“I...I noticed a window had been opened in the sisters’ morning room and assumed the assassin was there. My first assumption was that he was going for Arabella. I snuck into her suite and found her sleeping. Prince Reynauld was the only other likely target, so I went to his rooms through the escape tunnel. But he was awake, and he thoughtIwas the assassin.”
“It stands to reason from his point of view,” Nicolas stated, continuing his work.
Jade shrugged with her free shoulder. “Yeah. Ironic, though, that I was there to make sure hewasn’tabout to be killed. I would have handled him better if I hadn’t smacked my head so hard on the floor.” Jade raised her right hand to rub a tender lump on the back of her head. “And then you...you were the one who came through the window?”
Nicolas pressed his lips together, still not bringing his eyes to her. Was he simply concentrating, or was he trying to figure out how to answer her?
“Yes.”
