The Smell of Jasmine

Chapter 5: The Smell of Jasmine

Maren POV

Mrs. Marsh came for me when the reception was over.

The Great Hall looked different with the full lights on. Caterers in black were packing champagne flutes into crates. Two men in suits walked the room slowly, checking under the tables with flashlights, and one of them kept talking into his cuff. A technician was rolling up cable by the dais. Two hundred guests had cleared out in twenty minutes, and every one of them had stopped to shake Cassian's hand first. None of them shook mine.

He had sat next to me through the entire dinner and said three things. Eat. That wine is safe. Excuse me. Then he stood, buttoned his jacket, and went out a side door, and Penn and two other men fell in behind him without being told.

My father had stopped at my chair before he left. He put his hand on my arm.

"Eat something," he said.

I waited. His mouth opened like there was more behind it. A man from the Council called his name from the doors, and he took his hand back and went. By the time I stood up, his car was already out of the courtyard.

"This way, Your Grace," Mrs. Marsh said.

The corridors in the old wing were bare stone, but someone had run lights along the floor, and a keypad glowed beside every door. A camera in each corner turned its head to follow us. Near one window my breath showed in front of my face. Sloane's shoes were half a size too big, and every step slapped the floor and came back at me off the walls. Mrs. Marsh walked ahead and made no sound at all.

We took an elevator up two floors. Then a hall with no doors in it. At the end she held a key card to a black panel, the light went green, and a door twice her height opened inward.

"The east wing," she said. "These are yours."

The sitting room was bigger than my whole bedroom at home. Dark walnut. Leather chairs. A marble desk with nothing on it. A gas fireplace burned low behind glass, already lit, and the room was warm, so someone had started it hours ago and nobody had come in since. One window, floor to ceiling, with a deep stone sill. Past the glass I could see black pines and no lights at all.

Through an arch was the bedroom. A bed with four posts. Blankets turned back. A bathroom beyond that with the door open and steam coming out.

On the bed lay a black silk nightgown, folded square. A sheet of heavy cream paper sat on top, a crest embossed at the head of it.

I picked it up.

You will remain in these rooms unless escorted.

You will not contact your family.

You will not speak to the Council without my presence.

You are a signature on a treaty. Nothing more.

Fountain pen. The handwriting slanted hard to the right, the same hand as the card he had sent me on the sidewalk. He had pressed so hard on the last line that the nib cut through the paper.

No name at the bottom.

I put it on the nightstand face down. Then I turned it face up again, because turning it over didn't change anything.

"The bath is drawn," Mrs. Marsh said from the arch. "There are robes on the hook. Ring if you need me."

She went out. I heard the door seal and her steps not come back.

* * *

I locked the bathroom door and tested the handle twice.

Forty-one covered buttons ran down the back of the dress. Judith had sewn them shut over the pins. I got through them with my fingernails and one of my own hairpins, and it took ten minutes, and I stabbed myself twice in the palm. When the last one came open I stepped out of the silk and left it on the heated floor where it fell. The jasmine came off it in a thick wave. I breathed through my mouth.

A tall mirror with lights built into the frame stood beside the stone tub. I turned my back to it and looked over my left shoulder.

Five days ago the mark had been red with a silver stripe through the middle. Now the edges were dark, almost purple, and the silver had split into lines. Thin ones. They ran out from the center in every direction, the longest about the length of my finger.

It was beating. Slow. One beat to every two of mine. I stood there and counted forty of them, and it never sped up and never skipped.

I pressed two fingers on it. Once.

Heat shot down my arm and into my ribs, and Linnet hit me from the inside so hard I had to grab the edge of the sink. She was calling. Not words. The same low sound over and over, aimed at the door. She didn't have his name. She only knew he was somewhere in the building.

"Not yet," I said. It came out as barely a breath.

She kept calling. I took my fingers off the mark and she kept calling.

The water was almost too hot. I got in anyway. I used the soap and a rough cloth and I scrubbed my neck, my wrists, behind my ears, my hair, my arms, the backs of my knees, everywhere Judith had made me walk through her spray. The water went cloudy and smelled like her bedroom. I pulled the plug, ran a new tub, and did it all again.

When I stood up the second time, the water was clear.

I dried off and held my wrist under my nose. Rain. Lemon, the way my kitchen had smelled at midnight when I made the cake. Under both of those, thin and chemical, the Moonveil. It was faint. It was fading. But it was mine, and I stood in a stranger's bathroom smelling my own arm, and for the first time in five days I almost laughed.

The robe on the hook was black wool with a collar that stood up to my jaw. I put the nightgown on, then the robe. I tied the belt and fastened the hook at my throat. I checked the mirror from the front, then from each side. Nothing showed. My mother's ring had slipped out onto the wool, and I tucked it back under.

* * *

I was sitting on the stool by the fireplace working a comb through my hair with my fingers when the lock chirped.

The panel by the door went green. No knock.

The mark went hot before I turned my head.

He came in alone. Through the gap before the door sealed I saw two men in black suits standing in the hall with their hands folded in front of them and a bulge under the left arm of each jacket. Then the door shut.

Cassian was still in the black coat from the ceremony, the silver stitching along the lapels catching the fire. His phone was in his hand. His face had nothing in it. There was a dark spot on his white cuff, small, brown at the edges, that had not been there at the altar.

He walked three steps into the room and stopped. I know it was three because I counted, and the rug between us was wide enough to show it.

I stood up.

His phone buzzed. He looked at the screen, then set it face down on the marble desk. It buzzed again. He didn't touch it.

He looked at my face for about half a second. At the robe. At the fire.

I stopped breathing. The room smelled like rain and lemon now, I knew it did, I had made it that way myself an hour ago. I waited for his head to turn. For his nostrils to move.

Nothing moved.

"You will not leave the east wing without Declan Penn," he said.

His voice was level. It did not go up and it did not go down. He could have been reading terms off a contract to a man who had already signed it.

"You will not contact Cedar Ridge. Not your father. Not your stepsister. Not anyone who carries that name."

I put my hands together in front of me and held them there.

"You will not speak in Council unless you are spoken to."

The gas flame hissed behind the glass. Linnet pushed at my ribs and I didn't move.

"You will not expect warmth from me. You will not expect protection beyond what the treaty requires. You will not expect any of my time."

He stopped. For the first time he seemed to take a breath before he went on.

"I have a mate. I will find her. This marriage changes nothing."

He had said it in my ear in front of two hundred people. He said it again now in an empty room, with the door shut, in the same voice, and it still went in the same place.

I looked at him. I didn't look away.

"Understood," I said.

It came out clear. I had worried it wouldn't.

He didn't leave. A few seconds went by before I understood what he was doing. He was waiting. For me to ask why. For me to say something about my father. For my eyes to go red, for my voice to shake, for me to sit down on the floor and cry like the girl who had been walked down the aisle in a borrowed dress.

I kept my hands where they were. The flame hissed.

Something in his face went flatter. His jaw set. Whatever he had been waiting for, he had stopped expecting it. I had seen men look at a bad number that way across my father's dining table. They didn't argue with the number. They just wrote it off.

He picked up his phone. He turned and walked to the door and put his hand on the handle. He stood there with his back to me.

"Do not mistake my silence for kindness, Luna," he said. "I have none left to give."

The panel went green and the door opened and closed. The lock engaged. His steps went off down the hall, and the two men's steps went with him, and I stood in the middle of the rug and listened to every one until I couldn't hear them anymore.

The room felt a lot bigger with him out of it. And colder.

* * *

I sat down on the edge of the bed. I put my right hand flat on my left shoulder, over the robe, over the mark. Still hot. Still beating. Slower now.

Linnet had gone quiet. Not the way she went quiet at the Aldren, warm and humming. She was lying very still against my ribs with her head up. Waiting.

I sat there for a long time with my hand on my shoulder.

Two soft raps at the door. An actual knock.

"It's Marsh, Your Grace."

She came in with a tray. Bread. Cold chicken. A pear. A jug of water with a lid. I hadn't asked for any of it. She set it on the table by the fire and straightened up, and her eyes went to my collar, to the hook fastened at my throat. They stayed there for one second. Then they went to the fire.

She said nothing about it. She put her hand in her apron pocket and took out a small iron key, old, nothing like the cards on that door, and set it down next to the jug.

"Service stairs," she said. "East tower. Only if you need air. No one will stop you if you're quiet."

"Mrs. Marsh—"

"Good night, Your Grace."

She went out. This time I heard her steps go all the way down the hall.

I looked at the tray. I didn't touch the water. I didn't touch the chicken. I stood there with my arms folded and looked at it until I was sure of that. Then I picked up the key.

It was heavy for its size. The iron was rough and cold. I closed my fingers around it and my hand wouldn't stop closing.

* * *

I went to the window.

The glass was cold when I leaned in. One pane at the top had been left open an inch. I could hear the pines moving, and a long way down, an engine.

Headlights came up the road through the trees. The gate rolled back. Floodlights snapped on across the courtyard, one after another, and the wet flagstones went white. Two black SUVs came in first and stopped. A black sedan stopped behind them at the foot of the steps. Men in suits stepped out of the SUVs and stood spread across the courtyard with their hands at their sides.

The back door of the sedan opened.

Sloane got out first. Cream coat, buttoned to the neck. Her hair was perfect. Her phone was already in her hand.

Grant got out behind her. He shut the door and stood there with his hands in his coat pockets and looked at the ground.

"Thank you for the invitation, Your Majesty." Sloane's voice came up through the open pane clear as if she stood in the room. "We'll settle our family matters quickly and be out of your way."

A man stepped aside. Another man crossed the courtyard toward them. Tall. Black coat. Silver stitching catching the floodlights across his shoulders. The armed men in the courtyard turned their heads as he passed and none of them moved their feet.

Cassian.

The mark flared.

It hit so hard I felt it behind my teeth. I grabbed the stone sill with both hands. Linnet snarled, one low sound, and it wasn't fear. She had her teeth bared. She was looking down through the glass at the woman who had handed me that drink.

"Miss Hale," Cassian said. The same voice he had used on me an hour ago. Level. Courteous. Cold. "You are expected."

He didn't look up. Not at the window. Not at the east wing. He gestured toward the steps with one hand and Sloane smiled and went up them, and Grant followed her, and my husband walked in beside them with his head bent to hear what she said.

I didn't move.

My knuckles had gone white on the sill. The key was biting into my palm. Below me, the woman who had drugged me, sold me, and put a photograph in my face was walking into his house, and he was holding the door.

I kept my other hand at my throat. The robe stayed closed.

It was going to be a lon

g night. The mark stayed hidden under my fingers. And the cold in that building had only just started.