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Now I just want my own room rather than dealing with either of them.

The air in the narrow corridor turned instantly thick, a violent, volatile current of unspent aggression snapping between the two commanders. I stared at both of them, my heart slamming against my ribs as the unspoken, suffocating tension tightened around my throat like a vice. I didn’t have the energy for a guard war in a motel hallway.

“I’ll sleep on the couch,” Dax interjected, stepping between them with a reckless, easy grin that shattered the lethal quiet. He tapped his new sneakers against the carpet and pointed a finger at me. “I’ll keep watch inside the princess’s room, Cas. That way, neither of you has to draw steel before we even find the tavern.”

I took the easy way out. Immediately.

Dax for the win!

“Fine,” I said, keeping my eyes fixed strictly on the door handle, refusing to look at Mal or Caspian. “Dax takes the couch in my room. The rest of you take Room 15 across the hall.”

I turned the key in the lock, pushing my door open. “I wish to shower and warm up,” I told them, my hand resting on the brass handle. “We start the search for the Nauti Mermaid at dawn.”

“We need sustenance,” Manem muttered, his dark eyes checking the desolate parking lot below the railing with deep distaste.

“There’s a gas station right up the road,” I said, pointing toward the neon Chevron sign visible through the mist at the edge of the highway. “You can walk there in five minutes.”

I reached into my leather jacket pocket and handed Manem my small, plastic debit card.

Manem took it between his thick, scarred fingers, turning it over with an expression of intense, deep skepticism. “What is this sorcery, Tauriel? How does a square of blue plastic procure meat or grain?”

“It’s a debit card,” I explained, a small trace of my old smirk returning despite my exhaustion. “It holds the numbers of my mortal currency. You slide it through their console, and it pays for the food.”

“Why do they not simply use coin?” Manem grunted, his nose wrinkling in disgust. “Gold has weight. Silver has truth. Plastic is an illusion.”

“Because humans find coin an inconvenience,” I said. “They prefer everything to be weightless and digital. Just show it to the clerk at the counter, press the green button on the pad, and bring back anything that doesn’t taste like cardboard.”

I pushed him toward the stairs, Mal following with a slow, lingering glance over his shoulder before their dark forms disappeared into the fog. Dax waved a hand, stepping past me but not into the room. “I’ll be right out here on the walkway, Taur. Take your time.”

Caspian didn’t go across the hall.

The moment I opened the door to Room 14, Caspian stepped inside.

Not good enough to be called more than the inner circle. But good enough to follow me in the room.

His massive frame completely swallowed the narrow entryway. Before I could process his movement, he reached back, shutting the heavy wooden door behind him with a sharp, resounding click that sealed us away from the corridor, the cold wind, and the world outside.

“What the fuck was that?” he growled, his deep royal blue eyes flashing with a sudden, turbulent fury as he closed the distance between us. “Why would you choose Dax? Why would you lock me across the hall when you know I should be with you?”

Well Mr. High and Mighty Captain, you keep acting like I’m your duty and not someone you care about. That’s why. But I didn’t say what I was thinking.

“I am tired, Caspian,” I whispered, my voice cracking with exhaustion as I reached down, my trembling fingers gripping the hem of his oversized navy shirt I had borrowed to pull it over my head.

I didn’t care that I was standing before him in nothing but my lace undergarments; I was too hollowed out, too broken by the nymph’s call and the icy Pacific water to pretend anymore. “I wish to rest. I have to go into the duel in a few weeks.”

Caspian stopped dead in his tracks.

His fury didn’t dissolve, it transformed.

The turbulent blue of his gaze darkened into something heavy and completely bare as his eyes moved slowly down over my skin. He stepped closer. So close I could feel the radiating heat of his chest against my front, cutting through the lingering hypothermic chill in my bones.

He lifted his large hands, his long, calloused fingers grazing lightly along the gold and black swirls lacing across my collarbone, down the curve of my shoulder, tracking the jaded paths of the Remnikai tattoos with a reverence that made my breath hitch in my throat.

“You are going to drive me to ruin, Trouble,” he whispered, his gravelly voice dropping into a rough, low register that vibrated directly against my skin. “Standing here bare, carrying the storm on your flesh... Do you have any idea how hard it is to walk away from you? I want to trace every line of this dark magic with my teeth until you stop fighting the fire between us.”

Oh now I was something.

But I didn’t want to be hidden.