“I’m fine now,” I told her. “Once I wake up I’m fine until the next overexertion.”
She pursed her lips but nodded. Shantel didn’t like me but she seemed serious about her job of keeping me alive.
I begged for another bowl of mush and she had it delivered. “Don’t eat too fast or you will throw up,” she cautioned.
I inhaled the bowl and asked for a third, but a huge belch had me retracting the request. I put my hand over my mouth after, my eyes wide. Somewhere along the way I’d forgotten I was the crown princess of the Fall Court. It’s amazing what an empty belly and a few days in a dungeon had done to me.
“Apologies,” I said. “I forgot myself.”
Shantel just waved me off, ignoring my unrefined behavior. “Rest. Tomorrow we will see how you feel so that you can complete this project for Lord Stryker.”
Project. Is that what we were calling it when I interrogated fae to see if Lord Stryker needed to kill them?
I was tired though. “Hey, did you hear about the Northern lord marrying someone named Dawn?” I asked her.
Her gaze clouded over and she looked at the doorway as if to make sure we were not being overheard.“We don’t speak about that abomination,” she said and got up and left the room.
Abomination? Wow. They must really have done it. Dawn married an Ethereum lord.
I lay there in shock for a full hour before I drifted off to sleep.
* * *
The next several days were a monotony of questioning Lord Stryker’s guards, castle staff and anyone else close to him. I was beginning to see this man’s paranoia when he sent me his very own tailor. What, did he think he was stealing fabric from him?
But his suspicions proved fruitful. It began to become sad the amount of people I caught that had stolen from him or planned to. I even stopped an assassination attempt on his life.
After a full day of interrogation Stryker unlocked my leg cuff to release me from the interrogation room and bring me back to my bedroom, but I grasped his hand to still him.
He looked up at me, a wayward strand of hair falling across one eye.
Although I still referred to him by his formal title out loud, at some point over the last couple of days I’d shifted from thinking of him asLordStryker, to more often than not just Stryker. It wasn’t a development I wanted to think too deeply about. We’d spent so much time together a familiarity had developed.
“I’m sorry that you can’t trust anyone in your life,” I said honestly.
Today was the first day that my heart had softened to his cause.I didn’t condone what he did, but today I understood it. The man was so rich that a quarter of his household staff was either stealing from him or thinking about it.
His breath hitched, and his eyes fell to my lips.
“I told you not to use your power on me,” he growled.
I grinned. “I wasn’t.”
He released my hand and a slight flush crept up his cheeks.
“I have interrogated every person you have asked me to, at the risk of my health, for days on end. I want to ask two things from you in return. If I may.” I humbled myself.
He stood, leaving me locked to the chair. “And what might those be?”
“I would like you to bring the prisoner named Eli up to me so that I may prove his innocence and he can be released.”
His gaze darkened. “What do you care about some kid from the mines?”
I matched his glare. “I care about innocence and justice. I am a princess where I come from. I have a duty to my people as you have a duty to yours.”
He bristled at the accusation that he might not be doing his duty very well.
“And the second thing?” he asked.
