“It’s them,” I admitted finally, my voice barely steady.
“The statues.”
At this, he froze in surprise, his arms loosening enough for me to twist in his arms, so I was facing him. So I could look up at him and plead not for my life.
Not for my release.
Not even for him to let me go, so I was no longer his prisoner.
No, instead, I begged him for something else.
Something far more foolish.
I begged him to protect me against my greatest fear.
“Please… save me from them.”
26
ANYTHING
“Please… save me from them.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, his arms tightened instinctively around me.
He didn’t laugh or question me or even look disbelieving. No, instead, he went utterly still. Not the cold, distant kind I had seen in the throne room. But something heavier, more focused. As though the world beyond the two of us had narrowed to a single point, and that point was me trembling in his arms.
His grip didn’t loosen, instead, one hand slid more securely around my waist while the other lifted, before his fingers threaded carefully into my hair. Which meant he was soon cradling the back of my head with a gentleness that felt at odds with everything I knew he was capable of. He tilted his forehead slightly toward mine, not quite touching, but close enough that I felt the warmth of his breath brush across my skin as he leaned down.
“The statues,”he repeated quietly, not as a question, not as mockery, but as confirmation that he had heard me properly. Heat stung behind my eyes, and I loathed the weakness of it. I had faced him on his throne without cowering, yet this was whatthreatened to unravel me. My fingers curled into the front of his jacket again without permission, clutching at him as though he were the only solid thing in the hallway.
“I know they can’t hurt me,” I said quickly, forcing out the words, though my pounding chest refused to cooperate.
“I… I know they’re stone. I know that. But when there are too many of them, when they’re lined up like that, when they look like they’re watching…” My breath faltered again, and I swallowed hard, trying to steady it.
“It feels like they’re waiting.”
His thumb moved slowly at the base of my skull, a grounding pressure that drew my attention back to him instead of the pale shapes behind him. He didn’t glance over his shoulder, nor did he dismiss what I was saying. He simply listened with a gentle look of understanding softening his gaze.
“You were left alone once,” he said, and I didn’t know how he knew, half terrified that he could access my memories. As he was right, the phobia wasn’t something I had been born with but something that had developed. And it was the quiet certainty in his voice that caught me off guard, tightening my throat.
“Yes,”I admitted, forcing out the single word.
His jaw shifted slightly, as if he hated this for me.
“And no one came when you needed them?”
I closed my eyes at this and shook my head at the same time, my fingers tightening reflexively in his jacket once more. As if he were the anchor in this emotional storm raging within me when, in reality, I should have been asking how he knew any of this. Unless he was dangerously perceptive and could read me as though my secrets were written in plain view across my features.
“No,”I admitted, needing to say it aloud.
Something in him changed at that. Something understated that stripped him of the darker side I had learned to expect from the Enforcer. There was something fiercely protective in it,something that made me believe he would set the world ablaze before allowing it to touch me.
His hand left my hair for long enough to brush a loose strand away from my face before settling at my cheek, his thumb grazing lightly along the curve of it as though reassuring himself I was real.
“You are not alone here,” he said gently, before his voice hardened slightly with his next admission,
“And nothing in this house watches you without my consent.”
