“I’m coming,” I breathe, forcing my feet toward the door.
I enter the dining hall.
Luceran sits at the far end of the long table, his meal steaming before him. One arm drapes loosely over the chair, the other tapping a slow rhythm against his knee. He hasshed his heavy coat and untied his hair; it falls in loose waves over his shoulders, tousled in a way that feels far too casual for him. His shirt is undone down to his sternum, revealing more runes than I ever realized marked his skin.
I gulp, teeth grazing my lower lip as I fight the familiar dryness in my throat. Curse the Fae and their beauty. Curse the way my body reacts without my permission.
“Yes, my lord?” I manage.
He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t shift. Just fixes me with an icy stare.
“Come here. Now,” he commands.
I do as he says, moving quickly toward him, hands clasped before me, head bowed. Submissive. The posture makes my skin crawl, makes me loathe what I have become. Soon I stand only a few feet from him. His fingers drum restlessly against his knee, each tap echoing the frantic beat of my heart.
He tips his chin toward the empty chair beside him. “Sit.”
I gulp. “I am fine standing, my…”
“I said sit.”He kicks the leg of the chair, sending it scraping harshly across the stone toward me.
My hands won’t stop trembling as I grip the back of the chair. I circle it cautiously, as though approaching the edge of a cliff, and lower myself into it exactly where it stopped. I don’t dare move it back. I don’t dare presume to place myself properly at the table.
He watches me for far too long, silently assessing the distance between where I sit and where he clearly thinks I should be. Something unwanted and tense coils in my stomach.
Then he reaches out.
His large hand curls around the chair leg and he drags me forward in one smooth, powerful pull.
I gasp as the chair jolts, gripping the arms as if I might tumble out of it. In a single yank, I’m drawn up to the table beside him, much closer than I expected. Much closer than I can handle.
My throat is even drier than before.
“Are you thirsty?” he asks.
My eyes widen. Heat drains from my face. “Wh… what?”
“Your lips,” he says, and suddenly I’m acutely aware of the way his gaze lingers on them. “They look dry. Do you need water?”
I nod, only because my body seems incapable of doing anything else. “Yes. Thank you.”
Before I can reach for anything myself, he takes the hand-painted jug and pours water into the goblet at my place.
His movements are unhurried. Precise. Almost gentle.
When he sets the jug down, I seize the goblet with both hands and drink the entire thing in a single desperate swallow. Water dribbles from the corners of my mouth and down my chin. I wipe it away quickly, mortified.
Luceran raises one eyebrow. “More?”
“No. No, thank you,” I say too fast. He is being far too kind. Far too measured. I feel as if one wrong word will have me thrown into an ice cage beside Rollin.
Then he speaks, and the gravel is gone from his voice. The depth remains, low, resonant, humming through me like a chord struck in my bones, but the perpetual rage that usually shapes every word is… absent.
It should comfort me.
Instead, it terrifies me more.
“I should not have treated you that way,” he says. “At the mines. Spoken to you as I did. Left you there.”
