CHAPTER 7: THE DOOR HE SLAMMED

I stood frozen in place, staring at the door long after he was gone. My wrists still throbbed from his grip, and my heart pounded violently against my chest.

I was furious.

But beneath my anger was something far more unsettling.

Fear.

I had no idea what he would do next.

Lucas left the way a storm leaves a valley, all at once, with everything still shaking afterward. One moment he was standing over the arena order, jaw locked, reading my father's countersignature like a blade pointed at his throat. The next he said,

I hadn't done anything. I went back over it to be sure. I had found a seal. I had read a name. I had told him the truth, or the part of it I could prove.

Then why had he looked at me like that?

I slid down the side of the bed until I was sitting on the floor with my back against the frame and my knees pulled up to my chest. The stone was cold through my torn, bloodstained clothes. I let it be cold.

Everything Elaria had ever whispered about him came crawling out of the corners of the room. The Monster of Veyron. The prince who killed his own guards. What if I had offended him, some line I hadn't known I'd crossed?

Will he devour me when he comes back?

I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. And underneath it, quieter and far worse, was my mother.

Had anyone given her medicine today? Was the healer still coming, or had he found some excuse by now? My father had promised, and I knew exactly what a king's promise weighed when it cost him something. I had no letter, no messenger, no coin. Only a stranger's room and a vow.

If I hadn't read those ledgers, if I had stayed quiet and small the way I'd been taught, maybe my father would never have looked at me at all. Everything that had happened to her, to us, felt like my doing.

I put my forehead down on my knees, and the crying came without asking. Quietly, because I'd had years of practice at that. My shoulders shook.

Someone knocked.

Two soft raps, and then nothing.

I was on my feet before I knew I'd moved, scrubbing my face with my sleeve, smoothing my hair, straightening my spine until it hurt. Whoever was on the other side of that door did not get to see this. I had learned that much in my father's house: you never let the place you've been thrown into watch you break.

"Who is it?"

My voice came out almost level.

"Your maid, my lady."

A woman's voice, young and careful.

"May I come in?"

My maid.

I almost said no. I opened my mouth to say it. Instead I said,

"Come in,"

Because I couldn't think of a reason that would hold.

She slipped through the door: small, not much older than me, dark braids pinned neatly up, a bundle of folded cloth held against her chest. She shut it softly, like she wasn't sure she was allowed to make noise.

I watched her the way I'd watched every face since the arena. Two women, then Damon, all within the hour. What would this one want? A warning? A threat?

Then she smiled at me.

It was small and a little shy, and it was the first smile anyone had given me since I'd crossed the border. It went through my defenses like a needle through silk.

"My name is Nell,"

She said.

"The Crown Prince has assigned me to you. Personally. He chose me himself."

"He... chose you."

"Yes, my lady."

She stepped forward and held out the bundle, head bowed so low I couldn't see her eyes.

"He asked me to bring you this. He says you should bathe, and then put it on."

I took it because the alternative was to stand there staring. The cloth slid out of its folds, and I forgot to breathe.

It was silk, the color of cream in candlelight, stitched along the hem and cuffs with thread so fine and silver it looked like frost on glass. In my father's house, a gown like this belonged to one person, and it was never me.

"Are you sure,"

I said slowly,

"That I'm the one you're meant to give this to?"

"Yes, my lady."

"He was very clear. He told me to see that you wore it before he returned."

I looked at the silk in my hands, and a very cold part of my mind began to work.

A man walks out of a room in a rage and sends back a dress. Why? To dress up what he'd already decided to take? Or was the rumor wrong, and was this what it looked like when someone actually cared?

No. A stubborn voice inside me answered before the thought was finished. He cared about nothing. Men like him polished what they meant to break.

"I'll start the water,"

Nell said softly, and slipped through a narrow door at the back of the room. I heard pipes knock somewhere in the wall and the long rush of water beginning.

I laid the silk across the bed and walked to the window, because I needed to be somewhere that was not near that gown.

The room looked down on a courtyard of black stone, lit by iron torches that guttered in the wind. Guards stood along its edges, still as statues. And in the middle of it, in the full glare of the fire, stood Lucas.

He wasn't alone.

Damon faced him, wearing the same easy, crooked smile he'd worn in the throne room. I couldn't hear a word through the glass, but I could read every line of Lucas's body. His shoulders were rigid. His hand opened and closed at his side.

Damon said something. Lucas went white around the mouth, grabbed him by the front of his coat, and shoved him hard against a pillar. The guards didn't move. They had seen this before, I thought, or they were far too afraid to be seen watching.

Damon laughed, his head tipped back against the stone, easy as breath, even with his brother's forearm across his chest.

Whatever had been said down there, it was what had driven Lucas out of my room. And I still couldn't tell whether his rage was meant for me, or for the man he was pinning to the wall.

Lucas let go. He said one more sentence, short, and turned on his heel and strode out of the torchlight, out of my sight.

Damon smoothed his coat, unhurried, as if nothing had happened. And then, slowly, he tilted his head back and looked up.

Not at the sky. At my window.

I stepped away from the glass, but I was too late. He had seen me. His smile widened, gentle, almost fond, and he lifted two fingers to his brow in a lazy salute.

Then his eyes moved, slow enough for me to notice, one thing, carefully shaped.

I stood frozen behind the curtain, and behind me, in the bathing chamber, the water kept running.