chapter 6

NANCY'S POV

The wrist Arian had touched still felt warm long after I'd closed my bedroom door behind me, which annoyed me.

I sat on the edge of that ridiculous bed, which could fit six people, easily, maybe more, and stared at the door, thoughts running through my mind.

I started getting a headache. A dull thud at the front of my forehead, and I decided to stand up. Maybe drink some milk or some water or some juice. Something that would help calm me down. Eventually I got up, because sitting still had never once fixed anything in my life, and tried the handle.

Unlocked.

The hallway outside was empty except for warm light spilling from wall sconces and the faint smell of a floral air freshener.

I don't know why, but I was on my tippy toes, crawling around, because maybe I didn't want them to find out or know that I was checking out the huge house. I felt that they'd tell me to go back to bed.

The house seemed like it would hold a lot of secrets…that they wouldn't want me to find out.

I made it maybe twenty feet into the dark before I saw a huge burly shape pacing around with a spear.

A guard stepped into view from a side corridor, arms crossed, not saying a word. He didn't need to. His stance did the talking.

"Just stretching my legs," I said.

He didn't move.

I took two more steps anyway, testing it, and he shifted his weight just enough to block the hall without technically touching me. I got the message.

"Right," I muttered, and turned back.

So it wasn't a cell. It just had better lighting.

I was still fuming about it when I nearly walked straight into Cassie, who was carrying a stack of folded linens and didn't so much as blink at finding me pacing the hallway like a trapped animal.

"Trying to leave?" she asked, like she already knew the answer.

"Trying to see how far I'd get."

"Not far." She said it without judgment, just fact, the way you'd warn someone about a step that wasn't there. "Nobody does. Not at first."

"At first," I repeated. "So it changes."

"Depends." She shifted the linens against her hip and studied me for a second too long. "Depends on them. Depends on you, I suppose."

I followed her back toward my room because I didn't have anywhere else to go and because, annoyingly, she was the first person in this entire gilded prison who'd talked to me like I was a person and not a curiosity.

"How long have you worked for them?" I asked once we were inside, watching her set the linens down with the kind of precision that suggested this wasn't just a job to her, not really.

"Long enough to know better than to ask too many questions." She smiled when she said it, but there was something underneath the smile that told me the answer wasn't as light as she made it sound. "Long enough to know they're not what people whisper they are, either."

"What do people whisper?"

Her smile faded a fraction. "Things I'm not going to repeat to their new houseguest."

That word, houseguest, landed strange in my chest, half comfort and half warning, and I decided not to push her further tonight. She left not long after, promising to bring something to eat if I got hungry later, and I almost believed she meant it kindly instead of as another test.

I was still awake an hour later, lying on top of the covers because the bed felt too big and too soft to actually sleep in, when the door opened without a knock.

Jayden.

He'd changed out of his dinner clothes into something looser, sleeves pushed up, and he looked entirely too comfortable strolling into a room that wasn't his.

"You could knock," I said, sitting up.

"I could." He dropped onto the foot of the bed as if he owned it, which, given the circumstances, he probably did. "Didn't feel like it."

"Do you ever feel like doing what you're supposed to?"

"Rarely." He grinned, and it was the first grin all day that didn't feel like it was hiding something sharper underneath. "You tried the hallway."

"Word travels fast."

"Word travels fast when it involves you." He said it lightly, but his eyes lingered on me a beat too long, like he was cataloguing something. "Guard reported it before you even made it back to your room."

"Great. I'm being surveilled."

"You're being kept safe." He tilted his head. "There's a difference, even if it doesn't feel like one right now."

"Feels pretty identical from where I'm sitting."

He laughed at that, and something about the sound of it loosened a knot in my chest I hadn't realized was there. He stretched out further along the bed, entirely too at ease, hands folded behind his head like we were old friends instead of whatever strange, wary thing we actually were.

"Ask me something," he said.

"What?"

"You've been staring at me like you're trying to solve a puzzle since lunch. Ask me something instead of doing math in your head."

I hesitated, because I hadn't expected the offer, and because half the questions in my head weren't ones I wanted to ask out loud yet.

"Why do you want to keep me?" I asked instead. Simple. Safe enough.

His smile shifted, something more careful underneath it now. "Because you're interesting. Because you walked into our territory half dead and tore silver bars apart to get there. Because Neven wants you gone and Arian wants to study you like you're a specimen, and neither of those felt right to me."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the honest one I've got tonight." He turned his head toward me, and for a second the teasing dropped away entirely, and what was left underneath it made my breath catch. "Ask me something easier next time."

"Fine." I crossed my arms, mostly to give my hands something to do besides fidget. "Favorite color."

"Now that's easier." His grin came back, softer than before. "Gold."

He said it looking directly at my eyes, and I felt the heat crawl up my neck before I could stop it.

"That's not fair," I said.

"Never claimed to play fair." He sat up, closer now than he'd been a minute ago, close enough that I could smell sandalwood again, the same scent that had clung to his jacket. "You're blushing."

"I am not."

"You are." He reached out, tucked a strand of white hair behind my ear, like he wanted to see if I'd let him. I didn't move away. "It's a good look on you. For someone who claims she's not scared of anything."

"I never said that."

"You didn't have to." His hand lingered near my jaw a second longer than it needed to, and the air between us pulled tight, charged, the kind of moment that could have tipped into something else entirely if either of us leaned another inch.

Neither of us did.

He pulled back first, standing in one easy motion, the teasing grin sliding back into place.

"Get some sleep," he said. "Hallway's still off-limits. Try the garden tomorrow instead. Better view."

He left before I could ask what that meant, the door clicking shut behind him, and I sat there in the too-big bed with my pulse still uneven and my jaw still warm where his fingers had been, furious at myself for how long it took to fall asleep after that.