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CHAPTER 45

• Alessia •

IT’S LATE BY the time Kylian returns to our room in a less than favorable mood.

He heads straight for the bathroom just as I am climbing into bed, exhausted from spending all day in the infirmary and most of the night in the library.

I’ve just finally settled my racing thoughts when the shower cuts off. I groan as I pull the blankets higher, my body aching in places I didn’t know could ache. When the washroom door opens, the steam that rolls out carries his scent, and I make the mistake of looking up at exactly the wrong time.

Kylian steps through the doorway with a towel slung low across his hips, so low that the cut of muscle along his abdomen disappears beneath the fabric in a line my eyes follow. Water clings to the ridges of his chest and shoulders, catching the dim light making his skin glisten. His dark hair is pushed back from his face, wet and heavy, and without his usual careful styling.

I drag my eyes away quickly, hoping he didn’t notice.

“See something you like?”

He’s enjoying this. Heat crawls up my neck and into my cheeks.

“You could change in the washroom,” I say to the ceiling. “The way normal people do.”

“Why?” The floorboards creak as he moves closer. “And miss the opportunity to see you blush?”

I clamp my eyes shut at the soft swoosh of fabric dropping to the floor as the bed dips beside me and he climbs in. When I feel the covers pull and settle, I risk opening one eye.

He’s on his back, arms folded behind his head, the blanket pulled to his waist. His eyes are closed, and the faintest trace of a smile sits on his mouth. The bastard is deliberately taunting me.

I turn onto my side, facing away from him, and press my burning face into the pillow. The silence stretches between us until I finally gather the courage to turn back around and ask what I’ve been dying to know.

“Was everything okay tonight? In the cells? Eagan said there was a problem.”

He sighs. “There’s always a problem, but nothing you need to worry about.”

I focus on sounding nonchalant when I push for more. “The other day, your men pulled a human from the ship that you had sent to the cells.”

Kylian leans up on his elbow attentively but says nothing.

“The man was giving the guards a lot of trouble. Was he the problem in the cells today?”

He stares at the side of my face silently before he lies back down. “He was not. But you have a good memory, little mage.”

I wonder if he can hear my heart pounding or feel my anxiety in the bond.

After a while, just when I think he’s falling asleep, he speaks again. “Your magic,” he says softly. “When you used your power in the field, did you notice anything?”

I roll onto my back and stare at the canopy above the bed. “Like what?”

“Anything unusual. Anything that felt different.”

“My entire body shut down. That felt fairly unusual.”

He turns onto his side to face me, and I notice the way the light catches his crimson eyes.

“I was thinking we might visit King Xavian again,” he says.

The name hits a nerve. Yet I can’t deny the hope that flutters in my chest that there might be news of my sister. Kylian may believe Xavian’s intentions aren’t bad, but I don’t trust him.

“Has he found something? Has he heard anything about Sable?”

Kylian’s expression doesn’t change, but his jaw tightens the way it does whenever Sable’s name enters a conversation. A small tension that I’ve learned to read as his awareness that my sister occupies a part of me he cannot touch.