Thalia found herself going to the bathing chamber, stopping on the threshold. Cassius stood before the sink, his shirt off. Water ran down his face and neck, pooling into the crevices of his sculpted stomach.
“Can you send it for me tomorrow? Well, two letters—I don’t know how,” Thalia blurted out.
Cassius met her gaze in the mirror. “Two?”
“I wrote one for Katrina.” The mention of her handmaiden sent a pang of loneliness through her stomach. She’d been a bit morehonest in that letter. Well, at least about how horrible it was to be near Cassius again. How she hadn’t managed to find a … friend to confide in. Gods, maybe she shouldn’t send that letter; it bordered on pathetic.
“You don’t know how to send a letter?” Cassius interrupted her thoughts.
She rolled her eyes. “Not here I don’t.”
Cassius snorted but nodded, going back to what he was doing. It took Thalia a moment to realize he was applying ointment to a cut on his arm.
She started. “What happened?”
Cassius glanced up at her again. “Nothing.”
Thalia was already across the bathing chamber. “That looks like it’s barely healing; it’s notnothing. When did this happen?”
Cassius applied more ointment to the cut. “Yesterday.”
“How?”
Cassius sighed, muttering to himself before he turned to her, his eyes flashing in annoyance. “A dog.”
“You said there aren’t dogs here—”
“Exactly.”
It took Thalia a moment to realize what he’d said. “Oh, I get it, is this because of what happened earlier?”
Cassius washed his hands meticulously.
“Really, Cassius? What are we, twelve?”
He turned off the water, drying his hands on a towel. “Considering that you don’t trust me enough to share information, why should I share anything with you?”
Oh, the prick washurt. Thalia would have laughed if she weren’t so pissed off.
Cassius moved into the bedroom, aiming for the settee.
She trailed after him. “I told you I sawsomething.”
He sank onto the couch, facing her. “And I’ve told you, you’re a bad liar.” Thalia’s jaw ached from clenching it so hard as Cassius grabbed a discarded blanket. “Good night, Thalia.”
Then he turned over, pulling the blanket up to his chin.
Prick.
Her annoyance only grew as she got ready for bed, turned out the lights, and crawled between the sheets. But she kept the curtains open, only so she could see Cassius’s form on the settee, his back to her.
She knew he wasn’t asleep. And maybe because darkness concealed them and her mind still hummed with questions, she asked, “How did you become hand to the prince?”
Cassius shifted to face her. “Because the prince knew what I’d done before.”
Yes. He’d been captain of the guard, and he was the one who’d trained Reina and the rest of the soldiers in the palace. He had talked with her about how they might defeat the enemy in the north. Cassius, who’d promised to be by her side till the end. Even when an offer of marriage came from a human prince in a far-off territory with the promise of armies, he understood. Because her duty—her need to see her father’s and sister’s deaths avenged—came first. Even though it very nearly killed her to accept that marriage proposal.
But Cassius hadn’t understood after all.
