Chapter 13 #2
“Mrs. Thornbrew couldn’t find any of your Protectorate blue on such short notice,” the Commander said low, as I openly stared, mouth open.
My own bedroom back in Aquila was half the size of this.
The bed alone–with a plush duvet that looked so light and fluffy I wanted to drape my naked body with it–was larger than any I’d seen, with a draped canopy that would keep me toasty all night.
“Thank you,” I whispered, caught off guard. I’d expected a hay bed and a bucket to wash.
A familiar heat blasted my face and soothed the chill in my bones as soon as I walked inside. It was so similar to the temperature on the balmy spring Aquila nights.
“You magicked the room.” I stepped onto the plush carpet, my feet sighing in relief as they sunk into it.
“Only this one.” He leaned against the doorway, watching me with those sparking eyes, but not setting a foot inside what was supposed to be my space. “You still need to wear proper clothes and boots when you step out. The cold doesn’t show mercy.”
He nodded at the open wardrobe, where a row of coats awaited, perfectly straight on the wooden hangers, like soldiers in a line.
They were sleek and made of leather in shades of brown, grey, and white, while the insides, hoods and cuffs had been trimmed with fur.
I could move easily in them. Underneath them were a few pairs of boots, all of them sturdy, with mean-looking soles that would surely help me walk through snow and over ice when I’d inevitably escape.
A pang of guilt wormed its way inside me.
He didn’t have to ready this room or these clothes for me. He could have let me suffer in my torn dress until I either hunted down a deer skin or begged for shoes. That would have been the smart tactic to use when faced with the heir of the enemy Clan.
Instead, he’d made sure I was comfortable.
Yet here I was, already planning to use these gifts for my own means of escape.
The guilt quickly vanished as a new plot began to form.
Kindness was a powerful weapon.
I hadn’t even asked for this. He’d just anticipated my needs and…made it happen.
What trick was this?
We were enemies .
Was this show of comfort a way to make me lower my guard and gulp up the lies he’d tried to sell me?
“Why did you do all of this?” I said, keeping my voice light, in case he suspected that I suspected his scheming.
Honestly, it was exhausting to keep anticipating every grim scenario. But I didn’t know any other way to survive. After Grandpa Constantine’s death, nobody else bothered to anticipate.
“A precaution,” the Commander said, staring at me even more intently than before, if that was possible. “If we are to be married, maybe this will keep you from poisoning my tea in the morning.”
He drank tea. Of course he did; anything to heat up a body in this frozen place. It was probably made up of stubborn, bitter roots, wolf fangs, and ground rocks.
“It will take a lot more than a nice room and some pretty clothes for that,” I said and meant it. Nice, but this was all stuff. Loyalty was earned in very different ways. “And we’re not getting married.”
“Hopefully. But I like to be prepared.” His gaze traveled down my borrowed coat, which I had no intention of letting go until he left, despite the temperature heating up my cheeks.
He’d seen me in my ragged dress that revealed too much and with a shoe dangling from my ankle, but the thought of exposing myself again to his gaze suddenly felt wrong in this lavish room.
That had been all about humiliation. This was so much worse–it felt like being seen .
His gaze snagged on my ankles again. He shook his head, then nodded at a door next to the bed. “Washing room.”
Where that amazing bath awaited. A hint of a plant I couldn’t recognize, a mix of lavender and thyme, was already wafting from it.
“And this one?” I pointed to the door opposite the bed, dark and heavily decorated, so at odds with everything else in this bedroom.
Every day I’d wake up–and hopefully, those days were very numbered–it would be the first thing I saw.
“My room,” his voice commanded the space even as he refused to step inside.
My head whirled his way. “Locked from my side, I imagine.”
He shook his head. “And let you scheme your schemes unperturbed? I think not. As soon as I’ll turn my back, I know you’ll do something dangerous. But don’t worry, I won’t come into your room unless invited.”
Said the man who’d protected children from enemy Clans during a massacre. “Maybe I’ll just stick a knife in that back of yours and be done with it.”
As soon as I said it, the images of my father’s murder hit. I’d meant it as a threat, but I’d only managed to maim myself.
My mind and body had been so preoccupied with survival these past few hours, it had tried to shield me from the worst memories.
But as my feet thawed, the grief grew inside me once more.
The change must have shown on my face, no matter how hard I tried to keep my lower lip from wobbling, because the Commander cleared his throat loudly. “What did you want to ask me?”
I shook my head, as if trying to rid it of the blood and the mist and the dagger. They still skulked at the outskirts of my thoughts, waiting for the next moment they would cower me with pain.
I turned, squaring my shoulders.
Gifts, comfort, and show of humanity aside, this was still a negotiation.
“I want to talk to my uncle,” I said.
It was a longshot–and a test.
If I truly was no prisoner, there was no harm in me talking to family, now was there? No matter how powerful or dangerous that family was.
The quickest way to worm out the Commander’s lies was to face the truth, for one. Talking to Silas would let me know exactly what was going on inside the Protectorate and Aquila. As much as that waste of good Vegheara blood was capable of, gods forgive me.
That damn eyebrow raise of his was back with a vengeance. “You want to talk to the man who stole your throne and is telling everyone you’re a coward?”
Lies.
They had to be all lies.
“Yes,” I said. “I doubt you’ll allow a Protectorate envoy in your secret city–”
“Smart girl.”
“–but a palaver portal can do the same thing. Get me an enchanted book connected to Silas and I’ll do the rest.”
Palaver portals weren’t ideal–Dara said most of them could be intercepted with the right spell, the books themselves could be burned, and any missing pages could confuse the portal and make it open in a totally different spot.
But they were better than nothing.
“What if Silas doesn’t want to talk to you?” the Commander asked and I hated that I heard something very close to compassion in his voice. Or pity, which I despised even more.
This was just an act. It had to be.
And such a lame excuse. Already trying to find excuses to keep me ignorant, wasn’t he?
“Then someone from the Protectorate will,” I said with absolute conviction. “You can’t tell me nobody in Aquila wants to make sure I’m alive or not. That is a lie too grand for anyone to swallow. Do not mock my intelligence, Commander. I will not stand for it.”
“Only fools would do that, Huntress, and I am no fool.” He pushed himself away from the frame. His hand reached for the door, the most his body had entered my room so far. “I’ll see if it can be arranged.”
Hope bloomed inside me, for the first time since I’d woken up in that bleeding coffin. “When?”
“We’ll find out.” That smirk of his returned with a vengeance right before he closed the door and cut me off from the rest of the frosty fortress. “Until then, Huntress…endure.”