Heat crawled up my neck. “Hardly.” I kept my tone cool even as my pulse betrayed me.
“You’re practically vibrating with jealousy.”
I stiffened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you don’t. That’s why you’re gripping that cup like you want to strangle it.”
I forced myself to lower my wine to the table.
Trew was speaking with the man on his left, but he must’ve felt my attention, because his golden eyes found mine across the crowded hall.
A hunter seeing the glint of a blade in the dark.
Every sound in the hall faded.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but drown in his eyes that saw too much.
The expression on his face suggested he knew exactly what I wasfeeling. A slow, predatory smile curved his lips, and my heart stopped.
Then Kira said something that made him turn back to her, and whatever we’d exchanged ended.
I was pathetic, getting flustered over him.
Lexie’s grin grew wider, though she thankfully said nothing more.
I ate, carefully noting exits from the room, speculating where the door behind the dais might go. If the upper echelon used it, it might lead to offices. I’d have to find a way to search soon.
As we finished and started to leave the dining hall, I felt eyes on me again. A glance that way showed it wasn’t Trew.
I sensed a person watching from the shadows of one of the shadowy doorways along the right wall. Another enemy or someone who might recognize the princess of Caldrith Court?
Taking care, I glanced around, but whoever it was had melted back into the darkness, leaving only the prickle of unease between my shoulder blades.
Tomorrow I would face the trials.
Tonight, someone might be hunting me.
7
ISI
Iran through shadows, my breathing rasping around me. Smoke clogged the air so thickly, it choked off my lungs. My mother called out my name, and it echoed off the stone walls behind me, taunting, clawing, reaching…
I turned a corner and smacked into a door. Whimpers bubbled from my mouth as I wrangled with the handle, but it wouldn’t open.
A hand caught my wrist. Cold. Nails digging deep.
“Found you,” someone snarled in my ear.
I jerked awake, gasping, wondering where in the world I was. Reality crashed back into me. The dormitory. The castle. The court of my enemies.
The bunk beside me creaked, and someone murmured in their sleep.
My heart pounded as I stared into the dark, waiting for the nightmare to dissolve.
Around me, seven others slept soundly, lost in dreams that hadn’t ended in pursuit.
I let out a slow breath and sank back against the mattress.
