This was it. Now I would face her?—
But the throne was empty. In the corner of the room, a lone fae swept the floor with a quaint broom. And the lead handmaiden didn’t walk toward the throne; she started up the stairs.
So Rhiannon had another trick for me. A mind-game.
Maybe she would confine me to my bedchamber for the rest of the trials. Maybe she would have her handmaidens parade me through the whole citadel before she pushed me off the topmost point of the spire so I could hit every branch on my way down.
I followed the handmaidens up the stairs. We came to the landing, and we passed down the first hallway. But our course didn’t take me to my bedchamber or up to the top of the spire.
My breath grew short as we walked the length I knew. It couldn’t be. And yet the handmaiden brought us directly there.
To the door of Dorian’s quarters.
She gave a short rap. I heard footsteps on the other side. I pulled in a quick breath when the door opened and a growing panel of light appeared.
He was there. He was there, and his eyes were on me.
Dark, shuttered, unknowable.ThatDorian.
The handmaidens stepped back, and Dorian gestured for me to come inside. I didn’t understand, but my feet moved.
I crossed the threshold and stared into the empty bedchamber as Dorian closed the door behind me. It was just us two in this room. He pressed himself against the wood, both palms on it, staring at me like I would bolt if he approached.
My gaze fixed on the doorway to the adjoining room. Maybe Rhiannon had some sick plan for me to find her in there. “Is she here?”
“No.” He seemed to know instantly who I meant, who I anticipated. “Just me.”
My head jerked around. “Just you?” I didn’t believe him.
That shuttered look had left his face, replaced by something else. Trepidation? His Adam’s apple moved, but he remained planted. No greetings, no embraces, just a strangeness I couldn’t comprehend. Like he was holding back a tide with that door.
I stood there, not understanding. I had braced myself for a confrontation with a queen, imagined it from ten different angles, held my shoulders back and my head up the entire way up from the dungeon…
Now I was here, with the one person I wanted to see, and we stood alone and apart from each other in his bedroom.
Just him here. The tight band inside me couldn’t let go. “Where’s Rhiannon?”
“Hunting.”
“Hunting?”
“The queen enjoys a good hunt.” Dark hollows sat under his eyes. His hair was sleepless and wild. “And we have an overabundance of boar.”
Rhiannon wasn’t in the citadel. She was elsewhere entirely.
I turned toward him in full now, palms turning, wide and empty. “I don’t understand.” Emotion rose to my chest, up my neck. I had expected a confrontation, death, a final few words?—
Dorian struck toward me. His arms came around me and he held me to him, one hand sliding up to cradle my head. “I’m so sorry, Eury. You won’t be going back down there.”
I was enveloped by him, by his heady scent. I wanted to sink into him. I couldn’t.
“So I’m your prisoner now.” My voice came muffled into his shirt. “Is that it?”
His hand stroked my hair. “No. Not my prisoner.”
“Then what?”
“She can’t hold you. Not while you’re in the trials.”
