“Is there…” My voice cracks, so I have to start again. “Is there anyone else here?”
“No.”
The single word hits like a stone.
No. No one. No human. No Fae loyal to him. No court. No safety.
I shiver, truly shiver.
“Just you?” I whisper.
He stops. Turns.
“Just me,” he echoes, his voice low enough to rattle the frost from the walls. “Most days, at least. I keep a small staff, but as you can imagine, they never stay long. A week, maybe two. They clean, they cook, they do what staff do.”His gaze pins me in place.“But when they are gone, you will serve in their stead.”
Serve.I take him to mean cook and clean, but the way he looks at me. Those brief glances that skim down my body, subtle enough he must think I don’t notice, or bold enough he doesn’t care if I do. They tell me he may mean something more.
A stretch of silence yawns between us.
Then his eyes narrow, and he begins circling again.
“Tell me,” he asks. “Why would you bargain away your life… for a man who barely had a season of his own left?”
The words crash into me.
My spine stiffens. “That is none of your business.”
“Itismy business,” he cuts in, cold slicing through every syllable. “You stand in my hall, under my roof, bound by your own oath. I should know the worth of what I have just bought.”
“I wasn’t… your bargain wasn’t…” My fists tighten until my knuckles ache. “My father may not be young, but his life still matters.”
“Does it?” Luceran’s head tilts. “Mortals cling to time like it is treasure. Yet time slips through you faster than sand. Why give up what little you have for someone who was nearly out of it?”
Fury lashes through me so suddenly I forget to be afraid.
“You really are a heartless monster.”
For a moment, just a moment, I think something flinches in his expression. A flicker of heat beneath all that ice. But then it’s gone.
“Answer the question,” he demands quietly. “Why throw yourself to a monster for the sake of a dying man?”
The way he says “monster” sends a shiver across my arms.
And yet I lift my chin.
“If I have to explain that,” I say, voice trembling but steady, “then you have never loved anyone more than yourself.”
His pacing stops.
Luceran turns his head slowly toward me, and the fury simmering beneath his skin manifests in a sudden crack of ice along the nearest column.
“You presume much,” he says, voice no louder than a breath.
“I speak the truth.”
“A foolish mortal draws courage from ignorance. Do not test me again.”
“I didn’t test you. You insulted the person I love.”
