Of course he did.
Then, just as slowly, he stepped back, and the distance returned too abruptly.
“I will leave you to get settled,” he said, his tone composed once more, as though the moment between us had not just shifted something irrevocably.
“Oblivion,” I said quickly, and he paused at the door, his hand tightening at the frame before he looked back at me.
“I am not Oblivion to you, my sweet little Inanna,” he replied gently, and his voice lured me in enough to ask,
“Then what should I call you?”
He looked pleased by the question, his eyes flashing silver once more before telling me,
“You may call me Wyr,” he said, with that knowing grin of his gracing his lips.
“After all, we will be spending a lot of time together,” he added lightly, and my heart stuttered.
“Oh, is that right?” I asked, though the confidence in my voice didn’t quite match the uncertainty twisting inside me. And it was a challenge he seemed more than happy to rise to.
And in the end, it was a battle of wits he would win when he completely shattered me with one staggering fact.
“Indeed, especially since we will be…”
“Sharing a room.”
29
SHARED SPACE
After dropping this bombshell, he left.
The door closed behind him with a muted click that somehow managed to sound both quiet and final. I stood where he’d left me for a few seconds longer, holding on to his warmth that still lingered. The room wasn’t unwelcoming, but it definitely felt different without him in it. As if it had been shaped around his presence or something and now, all I was left with was the silence.
I was alone.
So, it was time to find out whether I was truly a prisoner or not. I forced my feet toward the door and wrapped my hand around the handle, only half surprised when it started to move beneath my grip. I opened it a small crack and saw the hallway we had walked down.
“So, not exactly a prisoner then,”I muttered to myself, wondering why Oblivion would chance leaving the door unlocked.
No, not Oblivion, butWyr.
That was the name he had given me permission to use, but it felt far too intimate, as though I would be stepping over aninvisible boundary just by whispering it. I shook my head, trying to encourage some sense back to my brain, then forced myself to move away from the door, if only to stop my thoughts from circling back to him.
The room felt larger without him in it.
Not because anything had changed, but because his absence left space where his presence had pressed close. Now, without his voice or the heat of him nearby, I found myself noticing details I hadn’t before. The faint scratch along the marble hearth as though something heavy had once struck it. The subtle wear on the velvet armchair nearest the fire, with one arm slightly smoother than the other. One book not perfectly aligned with the others, nudged forward as though it had been returned absentmindedly.
It felt lived in.
Standing in the center of it, I could no longer decide which truth unsettled me more. That I was in this room by myself, or that I was in his room waiting for him, knowing now that he would come back to sleep in it.
In the end, curiosity got the best of me, as now that I knew it was his personal space, I wanted to explore it and peel back the layers of the man who had kidnapped me.
I approached the desk first, unable to help myself. My fingers skimmed the edge of the wood, tracing the faint grooves and age lines, and I had the strange sense that even touching his things required caution. As though the room itself might notice and report back to him. There was a single fountain pen placed parallel to the edge of the desk, a leather-bound journal closed neatly near the center, and nothing else out of place. I couldn’t help but wonder if everything in his life was always this controlled and, if so, where did I fit into it? Was I meant to be another thing contained… or the one that finally unsettled him?
My gaze drifted across the shelves, lingering on titles I couldn’t fully make out from where I stood. Then my eyes went to the paintings lining the walls farther along the room. These were not gentle landscapes meant to soothe. They were dramatic, almost brutal in their beauty.
A fortress rising from jagged black rock, battered by storm clouds. A castle carved into the side of a mountain, its spires disappearing into mist. A coastline beneath an iron sky, waves white and violent against the cliffs. Places that felt too old to be human, too severe to be mere imagination.
