Closer. Yes, we must go to her.
Her cell was lit by a single torch, and it seemed to act as a spotlight against her, highlighting her hair and skin. I stood at the bars for a moment before I pushed the key into the lock and heard it disengage.
She never once looked up, even though I knew she was awake. Instead, she continued to sit with her back against the far wall, her knees drawn up, and her head resting on her arms. When she finally looked up, once I’d walked into the cell and she was now forced to look at my leather boots, her expression was composed, but I could see the tension around her jaw.
Her skin was pale beneath its natural fairness, and there were shadows under her eyes that hadn’t been there a week ago. The cell had no warmth, and the temperature had dropped overnight. I noticed as much, but did so from a distance, the way a king notices his prisoner is suffering but doesn’t care.
I didn’t fucking care.
The dragon settled; that was the thing I really noticed. Seeing her, it had quieted as if the proximity to her was enough, as if all its problems were solved now that we were in the same room.
She watched me take another step closer to her, then I stopped at a deliberate distance: standing close enough to read her face, but far enough that I wasn’t crowding her. I put my hands behind my back and said nothing. Neither did she.
The silence extended, and she let it run longer than most people would have. That was information. Most rushed to fill silence, an instinct toward self-justification I supposed, towardthe relief of their own voice. Yet she waited and looked up at me like she was measuring me.
Then: “What happened to you last night?”
I went still. It wasn’t the question I’d prepared for, though now that I thought about her insolence in general, I was surprised I hadn’t anticipated this exact question. Regardless, I’d had a catalog of my own questions ready: Merlin, Annwyn, the sword, her parentage, her instructions before she’d ever come here. What I’d come prepared with was the operational architecture of whatever Merlin had planned and her role inside it. I’d arranged my approach since early this morning, had the sequence mapped.
She’d managed to bypass all of it in six words.
“I don’t—”
“—it makes no sense,” she interrupted, shaking her head. “You forced it to happen, forced Corvin to fuck me while you just stood there and watched. And then... I’m assuming the dragon nearly overcame you, which is the reason why you left so suddenly.” A pause as my breathing hitched. “The dragon didn’t want Corvin to fuck me, did it?” She didn’t wait for my response. “No,” she continued, still shaking her head. “It didn’t, which begs the question: why would you do something your own dragon objected to that violently?”
Clearly, she’d been thinking about this all night, much as I had, though for different reasons. She’d sat in this cell and dissected what she’d seen, and she’d landed somewhere accurate enough that a response required more care than the question deserved.
The silence between us stretched as my mind fought for a response. She watched my face as I watched hers, and I was aware, in the back of my skull, that the pause itself was telling her something. I never paused, not when I had leverage, and I always had leverage.
“You’re not the one who questions me.”
My voice came out flat. Good.
She held my gaze, but she didn’t fold. Her eyes were both direct and unimpressed. “I have every right to question you when the subject is about something you did to me.”
The dragon began to shift, began to rise up within me, but I locked it down so fast my back teeth pressed together.
“I did what I chose to do.” A beat. “And as your king, I can choose to do whatever I want to do to you, and the reasons are mine alone.” Another beat. “We’re done with this conversation.”
Something moved across her face: the look of someone who has confirmed a hypothesis they weren’t happy to confirm, but she let the silence settle all the same.
“You’re coming with me,” I said and didn’t miss the surprise that registered in her gaze.
“For another attempt to reach Merlin so you can tell me which lies to feed him?”
I shook my head. “That farce is over.”
“Is it?”
I nodded. “Merlin will have figured out by now that Corvin’s attempt to free you has failed. So he will be well aware that both of you are now my prisoners; thus there is no reason to attempt to contact him any longer. Now, I’m only interested in the informationyoucan give me.”
I walked her to the receiving room, which was off the east corridor and was unremarkable by design. The room included a table, two chairs, and a window onto the courtyard. There were no tapestries, no thrones, nothing that might remind her that she was my prisoner and I was her king. Just a room where minor functionaries took minor meetings about minor things. I’d used it twice in the last year. The steward had looked faintly baffled when I’d told him to have it cleared.
But it was necessary. Necessary because I understood interrogation architecture. And the room in which you attempted to interrogate someone was as important as the questions themselves. The solar wouldn’t work, neither would the Great Hall, and neither would the dungeon. All of the above weren’t neutral enough, and a neutral room was of prime importance owing to the fact that it was disorienting. She wouldn’t know the rules of it. She’d spend the first few minutes constructing them, which meant she’d be spending those minutes on that rather than on me.
I walked her there with a guard at thirty paces. I didn’t bother to bind her hands, as a bound prisoner gave the meeting the wrong shape. I wanted a conversation because conversations were what loosened things.
She walked with her head up and her back straight. I found that mildly irritating without being able to explain why.
