Chapter 8: The Watcher

The days after I found the hidden room passed slowly, each one bleeding into the next until I lost track of time completely.

The fire burned and died and was relit. The servants came and went with trays of food I did not trust. The nobles laughed outside my door, and Ramiro's name floated through the walls like smoke, and I sat against the headboard with my back to the wall and my eyes on the door and waited for something I could not name.

But something had changed.

I could feel it in the way the air shifted when I walked through the halls, in the way the guards glanced at me differently, in the way the whispers seemed to grow sharper and more curious. The king had not come near me since that night. Three days had passed, maybe four, or maybe more. I had stopped counting.

But I felt him watching.

It started small, with a prickle on the back of my neck when I walked past a certain doorway, a shadow that moved when it should have stayed still, and a pair of golden eyes that were there one moment and gone the next.

I was walking back to my chambers after one of my supervised walks, with my head down and my shoulders hunched the way I had learned to walk when I was a child, when I felt it again. That prickle, that weight, and that sense of being seen.

I looked up, and I saw Leandro was standing in a doorway at the end of the hall.

He did not move, or speak. He just stood there, silent and still, with his golden eyes burning into me from across the distance. His arms were crossed over his chest, and his dark hair fell across his forehead like he had been running his hands through it, and his face was unreadable, with a  mask of stone and shadow.

I stopped walking.

The guards behind me stopped too, and I heard one of them suck in a breath. I could feel the tension that suddenly filled the hallway like water filling a room. No one moved, and no one spoke. The only sound was the crackling of the torches on the walls and the distant howl of the wind outside.

Leandro did not come closer.

He just stood there, watching.

I should have looked away, or dropped my gaze and kept walking and pretended I had not seen him. That was what survival looked like for me. Keep your head down, make yourself small, and do not challenge the monsters.

But I could not look away.

His golden eyes held mine, as if burning into my soul, and full of something I could not name. I felt my heart pounding in my chest, my hands trembling at my sides and my breath catching in my throat.

"Why do you keep looking at me?" I asked.

My voice echoed in the silence, louder than I intended, and I saw something flicker across his face like surprise, maybe, or pain. Or something else entirely.

He did not answer.

He just stood there for one, two, and three more heartbeats. Then he turned and walked away, his boots echoing on the stone floor, and his shadow stretching long behind him in the light of the torches.

The guards behind me exhaled, and one of them muttered something under his breath. I stood there for a long moment before I forced my legs to move, to keep walking, to go back to my room, close the door and press my back against the headboard and pretend that nothing had happened.

But something had happened.

He had been watching me. I knew I was been watched all along, but I did not know it was him.

But what made me anxious was that, he did not watch me like the nobles watched me, with their cruel smiles and their hungry eyes. And not like the guards watched me, with their cold indifference and their hands on their swords. He had been watching me like I was something precious, something fragile, and something he did not know how to touch without breaking.

"I did not know what to do with being looked at like that. My whole life, people had looked at me like I was dirt beneath their feet, like I was something to be used and thrown away. But Leandro looked at me like I was made of glass, like one wrong move and I would shatter. It made me angry, confused, and it made me want to know what would happen if I did shatter. Would he try to put me back together? Or would he walk away like everyone else?"

I did not understand it, and i did not understand him.

He was the king. He could have anything he wanted, and he could have anyone he wanted. He could have killed me a hundred times by now, could have let the court tear me apart, and could have thrown me back into the snow and forgotten I ever existed.

But he had not.

He had kissed me and stopped. He had touched me and pulled away. He had looked at me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered, and then he had left me alone in the dark.

And now he was watching me from doorways, from shadows, and from the edges of every room I entered.

I saw him again the next day.

I was walking past the library, a room I had not yet been inside, when I felt those golden eyes on me again. I turned my head, and there he was, standing in the shadow of a tall bookshelf, with his arms crossed over his chest, and his face unreadable.

He did not speak, and neither did I.

I kept walking, and his eyes followed me until I turned the corner and disappeared from his sight.

Sometimes on my supervised walks, I intentionally make myself trip on some uneven parts and corners of the castle I walk by, just to see if he was still watching. And each time, I caught a glimpse of him trying to catch my fall, even from his distance.

"There was one time near the great staircase, where the stone floor dipped in a place no one ever fixed. I let my foot catch on the edge, just enough to make me stumble forward, and just enough to see what he would do. I did not fall. But before I could catch myself, I saw him step out of the shadows. His hand was reaching for me, with his fingers outstretched, and his golden eyes wide.

Then he saw that I was steady, that I had not truly fallen. He pulled his hand back and disappeared into the darkness before anyone else saw him. I stood there with my heart pounding, and I realized he had been closer than I thought. Always closer than I thought."

That night, I could not sleep.

I lay on the floor beside the bed with my back against the headboard and my eyes on the door, and I thought about his golden eyes and his shaking hands and the way he had looked at me like I was something worth saving. I thought about the hidden room and the frozen waste and the pull of nothingness that had almost taken me. I thought about my mother's voice, so soft and warm and so clear that I could almost feel her hand on my face.

"You are stronger than you know," she had said.

I still did not believe her, but I was still here.

And somewhere in the darkness of the castle, the king was watching.

I could feel his eyes on me, burning into the back of my neck like a brand, even though he was not in the room. Even though he was not anywhere near me.

The fire had burned down to nothing but embers, and the room was so dark that I could barely see my own hand in front of my face. But I could see his eyes. I could always see his eyes, even in the dark.

I closed my eyes, and I saw the same golden eyes watching me.

I reached out into the empty space beside me, and for a moment I pretended there was someone there. Someone warm. Someone who would hold me instead of hurt me. Someone with golden eyes and shaking hands and a voice that said 'I cannot' like it was the hardest word he had ever spoken.

And when I woke the next morning, my hand was reaching out toward the empty space beside me, reaching for someone who was not there.