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“She’s with me,” Eagan’s voice filters back through the link. “Coming to you now.”

Hearing this, I turn back toward our bedroom and take the corridors at a pace that barely qualifies as walking, and when I round the final corner toward our door, I see her.

Barefoot. Hair loose around her shoulders. Wearing nothing but the silk nightdress I last saw her in when she fell asleep beside me.

I reach the door before she does and pull it open, standing beside the frame, and the words that leave my mouth make her flinch.

“Where have you been?”

Her lips part, but before she can answer, Eagan appears behind her, his expression carefully blank. “She wanted to check the infirmary.”

Alessia’s eyes move to Eagan, and something passes between them in the space of a heartbeat.

She confirms the story with a nod that comes half a beat too late, and then she is slipping past me through the doorway, heading straight for the bathroom. The door closes behind her, and a moment later, the water turns on. The fact that she chose to shower rather than come back to bed at this hour sits wrong in my gut.

I look at Eagan. He stands in the corridor with his hands clasped behind his back, and he meets my gaze without flinching, which is either proof of his innocence or proof that he has had centuries to perfect the art of lying to my face.

“The infirmary?” I ask slowly. “This late?”

“She was worried about the children,” Eagan replies without hesitation.

I hold his gaze longer than is comfortable for anyone who isn’t him. Eagan doesn’t blink. Doesn’t shift. Doesn’t even breathe wrong. He is flawless in his stillness, and that is what unsettles me most, because Eagan is never this careful unless he has something to be careful about.

I step back into the room and close the door. As the latch clicks into place, I breathe in deeply and find it. Faint, nearly smothered beneath Eagan’s scent.

A scent that doesn’t belong to me, one that smells of infection and fever sweat, and I let out a breath, knowing she must have been tending to the sick children after all. Maybe she had gone to check on the children in the ballroom’s makeshift infirmary.

Lowering myself into the chair beside the window I stare at the bathroom door where the water continues to run, and I wait. When she comes out, she doesn’t even glance at me, just moves toward the bed and climbs in.

“Are you coming back to bed?” she asks, pulling the blanket back on my side as an invitation. Reluctantly, despite wanting to question her, I climb in, feeling the bond tug me in her direction.

***

I am already awake when Alessia stirs beside me because I never fully fell back to sleep.

After she emerged from the bathroom last night, her skin scrubbed pink and smelling of nothing but soap, she climbed into bed and fell asleep. Hours passed while I listened to her heartbeat, trying to read the bond, yet I felt nothing while she slept.

As her eyes open now, something is different. The wariness that usually greets me in the morning, that careful measuring she does before deciding how much of herself to give me for the day, is missing. In its place is a brightness that confuses me.

“Good morning,” she says, propping her hands on my chest and resting her chin on them. I push her messy hair from her face, watching her carefully.

“Morning,” I reply just as a servant brings breakfast in on a wooden tray. Bread, fruit, and some of the tomatoes from the field, sliced alongside some avocado. Alessia sits cross-legged on the bed and eats with an appetite that should reassure me, but it doesn’t, and between bites she asks questions. Can she try planting fruit trees? Can she get help in the vault? Have the caretakers reported on the children’s fevers this morning? Has there been any news from King Xavian?

I answer each one, watching her closely. Something about her sudden change in behavior tells me she either wants something or is trying to distract me from questioning her about last night. She talks about wanting to plant more of the medicinal herbs today, about needing to check on the chest salves she left in the vault, about whether Eagan managed to find any more beeswax candles. Her hands move while she speaks, animated and open, and she meets my eyes with a directness that would be convincing to anyone who doesn’t know her.

This is performed. I can feel it in the bond, a surface warmth that covers something deeper and more complicated. She is managing me.

“You seem better,” I say carefully.

“I feel better,” she replies, and she bites into a slice of tomato. She would be entirely believable if her pulse hadn’t jumped when she said it.

I don’t question her, at least not yet. There are ways to get truth from people that don’t require questions, even when every instinct in my body screams for immediate answers.

After eating, I move to the bathroom and turn the shower on. As the room fills with steam, I strip off what I slept in and step under the spray. The hot water hits my shoulders and runs down my back, but it does nothing for the tension and knots between my shoulder blades.

My hunger is worse today. I’ve been able to ignore it for the most part, but my anxiety has it rearing forward to the point it has become a full-body ache that pulses with the desire to sink my teeth into her. The blood she offered me last night was enough to take the sharpest edge off, but the edge has grown back, honed by proximity and the maddening beat of her heart through the walls.

My hunger is nearly unbearable.