I leaned my elbows on the table, knowing I was invoking a tempest and being powerless to stop it. “What are you thinking? Tell me.”
So I knew how to fix this.
Fix us.
She shrugged, still not sparing me a glance. “Just wondering who you think I am.”
Of all the replies–“You’re Allie. The Huntress and the true heir to the Protectorate throne.”
“Not my titles. Me.”
She stood in one jarring movement.
I parted my lips to argue, concerned she would leave before we’d mended what had been broken, but she surprised me once more.
She lifted her glorious leg, skin glistening in the firelight, and stepped up onto the table. She stood as straight as a goddess, looking at me like the mortal I was.
She was the storm incarnate.
“You upended my life when you brought me here.” She began walking on the table, plates cracking under her feet. “For safety or not, it was an earthquake that shattered the life I knew.”
I leaned back slowly in my seat, jaw clenched so hard, the pain spidered toward my temples.
I smelled the danger, heard it in each one of her cold words, but I was morbidly fascinated about what she’d do next.
So I kept watching.
Waiting.
“And I understood. Eventually.” Allie lifted her foot and twirled her ankle, sliding the wine decanter toward the edge of the table. The glass scraped against the wood.
Her gaze didn’t stray from mine.
She was daring me to stop her.
I didn’t.
I would let her unleash whatever she wanted.
The decanter shattered against the floor in a crystalline burst.
“That didn’t change the fact that I woke up in a coffin, in an unknown place,” she went on.
The glasses came next, all crashing against the stone.
The closer she got, the more destruction she left in her wake.
Not the food, though. She was too principled to waste Mrs. Thornbrew’s efforts.
But everything else was fair game–including me.
“Then you kept this–” She raised the heinous dagger, baring her teeth. “–a secret. You investigated it behind my back.”
Spoons and forks clambered to the ground.
“Again, I tried to understand. I was a former enemy and you knew I'd burn down your city if I suspected you had been involved in my father’s assassination,” she hissed. “Which I would have, I didn’t know you. I wish I didn’t know you now.”
My heart galloped, threatening to rip my chest open like she seemed to want to.
