Page 130 of Queen of Nothing

But then there’s a lot of things about Father I thought were true—and turned out to be the opposite.

Dray doesn’t wait for me to respond. Doesn’t wait for my permission to come in.

Without looking back at Abigail, he says, “Bring a bottle of single malt.”

Mute, I shake my head at her.

But Dray apparently overrides the authoritative glare in my eyes, because she turns on her heels and leaves.

The door clicks softly behind her. And the room suddenly feels quieter, the air thicker.

“After that conversation with your father,” Dray says, and he starts for me, “you can’t convince me you aren’t in need of a drink.”

His steps are casual, wandering almost, but the direction is clear.

I back up until my shoulder presses into the doorframe, firmer, as though the wood will split open for me and swallow me up.

If he doesn’t notice my nerves in that, then he does in the socks on my feet, how they curl with my toes.

My voice is smaller than I’d like it to be, “It wasn’t so bad. He could’ve smacked me—but he didn’t.”

My jab lands.

Dray’s smile is gentle over his pink lips.

Turning his cheek to me, he pauses at the bookshelf built into the wall, and looks along the crammed row of music compositions. Mostly piano.

The Bösendorfer springs to mind—and just the thought of playing the piano, being reunited with the instrument, is enough to soothe my insides.

But I don’t think Father will be letting me out of this bedchamber-prison anytime soon.

So the relief is short-lived.

Dray reaches out for the spines of old, leather-bound books. The entire histories of every grand musical genius in existence.

The imps have been and gone, because the fire in the hearth is lit, and the light dances soft over his cheekbone.

Then he turns his sharp, glass eyes to me.

In the firelight, his long lashes cast shadows down his face.

The smile is gone from his pink mouth, and he makes no effort to respond to my jab.

Maybe my old habits didn’t die, they just went dormant. And in the familiar anxiety around Dray, an intruder in my safe place, my bedroom, it’s rising again.

Dray closes in on me.

With each step closer, I fall back a little more—until my spine hits the other door, the one left open to my wardrobe.

Dray only spares a quick, disinterested glance at the walk-in over my head, before he drops his gaze to me—and those diamond daggers have me pinned.

His finger ghosts down the thin strap of my top, leaving my skin prickled in the wake of his touch. “You might want to put something on over these scraps you call clothes.”

Not scraps.

But I am filling out the top and shorts a lot more than I used to. And I’m not so keen on standing around and arguing it with Dray, when his implications linger in his wandering stare—

A stare that glides over my breasts.