But he didn’t.
And when I lifted my head, my breath caught in my throat.
The glasses at the table were familiar. The bread. The cheese. The knife.
And the bottle of wine.
Max walked over and handed me a blindfold, his voice lacking the heat from a moment ago. “Put that on.”
“This is…” My eyes jumped from the table to him, and I scrambled to find a reason for it other than the one I desperately wanted to cling to. When I couldn’t do that, I swallowed past the emotion lodged in my throat. “This is fromThe Princess Bride.”
He kept his eyes on mine, shrugging it off like it was no big deal. “If you say so.”
As he took a seat at the table, I put the blindfold on.
I listened as he poured the wine into the glasses, unstoppered a small bottle of what had to be fake poison, and tapped one of the cups.
Max had recreated a scene from myfavoritemovie, when the Dread Pirate Roberts rescued Princess Buttercup. He outsmarted her captor, Vizzini, by challenging him to a “Battle of Wits.” Vizzini drinks from the cup he suspects isn’t poisoned, not realizing Roberts had poisoned them both.
One could argue that what the Dread Pirate Roberts did was an example of subterfuge, and therefore a perfectly reasonable lesson for our training, but…
It had to be more than that.
When Max took my hand, I sucked in a sharp breath. He lifted it off the table and placed one of the glasses in it, wrapping my fingers around the stem.
I didn’t know if it was his hands shaking, or mine.
But he held on just a moment longer than necessary before letting me go.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The spark of hope his lingering touch created didn’t fade as I walked back to Camelot Courtyard. I’d spent most of the afternoon convincing myself Vivian’s reaction stemmed from Max choosing her, especially once he’d defended her, but now, I didn’t know what to think.
As I thought it over, I pulled the clues out of my lockbox and worked on removing the paint smudges from the group photo.
A statue I hadn’t seen in the other Maiden Introduction photos stood out in the background of my clue. I pulled out the magnifying glass in my lockbox to look closer.
Then I walked back to the sitting room.
I ran into Morty in the hallway.
“What the hell are you doing, Morty?” I huffed as I walked up to him. “Why are you always lurking around?”
“Why are you so fired up about it?” He shrugged. “Looking to burn the place down again?”
“Burn the—What the hell are you talking about?”
Morty picked his nails. “You really need to brush up on your Camelot Court trivia. It’s like you don’t even care about the history and tradition here.”
“I don’t,” I said dryly. “Spill it.Now.”
He pursed his lips, and it occurred to me to be intimidated, but I ignored that feeling. “Ugh. You’re such a bossy bottom. Can’t a guy get aPlease, Sir, may I have some answers?”
I arched a brow, pursing my lips in return and propping my hands on my hips for good measure.
Being ordered around and asked to heel by one Dread brother was more than enough. No way I’d give Morty that power over me, too.
Thankfully, he read theno chance in hellwritten in my expression and sighed. “You’re no fun. Alright, follow me.”
