CHAPTER 4

Murielle's POV

Colette's whole face lit up at the news, a laugh escaping before she seemed to notice it had. Then, just as suddenly, it stopped, like she'd caught herself hoping for too much.

"What if I'm not the King's mate?" she asked, equal parts thrilled and terrified by her own question.

Callum smiled at her the way he used to smile at me, once, a lifetime ago. "Only you deserve that title."

I stopped listening to the rest of it. I had a piece of glass to deal with.

I worked it out of the sole of my foot with two fingers, slow enough not to tear the cut any wider. My hands were steadier than I expected. Three years of doing exactly this in the dark, guessing at how deep a cut ran by feel alone, had taught them to be. Nobody in that cell had ever cared whether I bled, so I'd learned to handle it fast and quiet, before anyone decided my pain was worth their attention, or worse, worth using against me.

The glass came free with a small, wet sound I felt more than heard. I didn't let myself look at it too long.

Callum noticed anyway. His brows pulled together.

"When did you get hurt? Why didn't you go to a healer?"

"It's just a small wound," I said, keeping my voice as flat as his usually was. "I got used to treating myself in prison."

Something crossed his face, gone before I could name it.

Then Colette started crying behind him.

"It's all my fault. My sister's suffered so much because of me."

He turned back to her before the sentence even finished, reaching to comfort her, and whatever had softened toward me hardened right back over on his way there.

"Stop trying to make yourself look pitiful," he said, not even looking at me while he said it. "If you were hurt, you should have said something sooner. It's not as if we don't have healers here."

He sent everyone else out of the room. Then, to me alone:

"Don't try anything. Stay in your room, and don't wander."

He called for a healer to see to my foot before he'd even finished the sentence, turning back toward Colette before I could thank him.

I went to find my room anyway, though I had no way of knowing if it still counted as mine to him at all.

The hallway leading to it told me most of what I needed before I'd even reached the door: Colette's handmade decorations hanging where nothing used to hang, her favorite colors painted over walls I remembered differently, her photographs lining the way like she'd always lived here and I hadn't.

I pushed the door open anyway.

It was a storage room now. Boxes stacked where my bed used to be, someone's old furniture draped in sheets against the far wall, the window I used to climb out of as a girl half-blocked by a wardrobe that wasn't mine. Not one thing left inside it was mine anymore, not even the dust settling on all of it.

I stood in the doorway longer than I meant to. Long enough that I had to remind myself there was nothing left in that room worth grieving, since everything I might have grieved had already been packed away or given to someone else years before I ever got the chance to notice it was gone.

With nowhere else to go, I went looking for an empty guest room instead. Callum found me in the hallway before I found one.

"Why are you wandering around?" he asked. "Your room's on the third floor."

"It's a storage room now."

He went still. It took him a second to actually remember, and when he did, something close to guilt pulled at the corner of his mouth, the first sign of it I'd seen since I'd walked out of that cell.

"I'll have your things moved out as soon as I can. Use one of the guest rooms for tonight. The healer's already on the way."

That small scrap of concern caught me off guard, some old, foolish part of me leaning toward it before I could stop it.

I hated myself for that a second later, same as I always did.

He was turning to leave when I asked it anyway.

"Why?"

He stopped.

"You never once visited me in three years. You said you'd get me out."

Silence stretched out behind me, long enough that I almost thought he wouldn't answer at all.

"It was only three years," he said finally, without turning around. "You took years of her happiness from her. Don't be so selfish."