A Debt of Shattered Hope

43. Chapter 43

Chapter 43

T he Bandrui and I had spent long hours talking around everything that had happened. Neither of us letting the other speak too much truth into the air. When Silver appeared at the doorway, the sun was setting, and she gave me a tight hug, whispering her goodbye to me. She knew more than she was willing to admit, and I was happy for it. She had pressed the beads into my hand with a meaningful look.

I knew what she had meant by it, and I had nodded my agreement. I would do as she silently asked, if just for these last few days.

I would stop avoiding him . . . at least for these last few days. I could feel the timer ticking down as I wandered the corridors, following each new thread I found.

It was no true surprise when two arms banded around my waist and drew me into an empty room. I had been expecting it, though not knowing exactly when he would strike. It was only a matter of time before he found me now that Goose, who was shut out of the room with a slamming of the door, was no longer hiding me.

Desperation warred with joy and anger in the storm above his evergreen eyes. “You’ve been hiding from me.”

It was not a question. It was not a demand for explanation. It was a simple flat statement of fact.

“Oh, you noticed, did you?” I stepped back from him while his hunter’s eye tracked me as I moved deeper into the room.

Goose, not to be kept from his charge, slowly leaked smoky tendrils under the crack of the door and began reforming on the other side, passively sitting, guarding the door.

“Did you think I wouldn’t find you?”

The thunder of his voice rolled over and through me, every nerve in my body lazily waking up to light themselves on fire to burn bright for him.

“I hadn’t considered it, honestly. You really do think highly of yourself if you think I spend my entire day obsessed with you.”

The creaking of his leather gloves punctuated his irritation as he flexed his fists. “How?”

“How am I obsessed with you? I’m not.”

“You are. But more importantly, how have you been hiding from me? I will know so that I can remove that obstacle. You will never be able to hide from me again.” He drew closer, close enough that the warmth from his body radiated through my gown and any nerve still left in bed was shoved out and forced to attention.

“Do you think I would tell you? I will hide if I want to.”

“Coward,” he spat, his arm snaking around the small of my back and pressing me flush against his body. “Hide all you want, little bug. I will always find you. I will always hunt what is mine down and return it to its rightful place.”

“I’m not your fucking property,” I hissed and tried to push him away from me.

It was like a toddler shoving a mountain.

“We both know you are mine. As I am hopelessly yours.” His head dipped, his lips hovering dangerously close to mine.

I could almost taste his kiss. Could feel the way the sunshine of it flowed into the hollow spaces of my existence and filled them with warmth.

“But you aren’t, are you?” I whispered against his lips, the heat of the moment turning my voice dark and husky with need as my body responded to his nearness even if I did not wish for him to even exist near me .

“You know I am.” He punctuated his statement by slowly grinding the thick, stiff length of his cock against my stomach.

I could not keep my hand still. It had a mind of its own as it slithered between us and took hold of him. I had longed to do this. Needed to feel the weight of him pressed against my palm. To feel the beat of his heart so bald against my flesh. If only there were not several layers of cloth between us.

His hips pressed him farther into my grip as he hissed with need and tipped his head back to savor the sensation of my fingers clenching around his shaft through his breeches. A deep, masculine groan of satisfaction rumbled through him, shaking his entire body as I stroked him.

“You aren’t. You never have been, and you never will be.” I rose on my tiptoes and pressed a single kiss to the gentle valley above his heart, the linen of his tunic sticking to my lust-slicked lips.

I yanked my hand away and danced out of reach, reaching for the door. Goose watched me with uninterested eyes and did not move from the doorway he was so clearly blocking.

“Move, Goose!”

I was too late, though, and I was yanked back against him again. This time, he bodily walked me to an empty wall and pressed my face against it so that I had nowhere to run to, no means of escape as his big body enveloped mine.

“Dig your claws in all you want, kitten. It changes nothing. You can claw and scratch and bite all you want. I encourage it. I like it.” His knee slipped between mine and wedged itself higher between my fighting thighs. “I prefer it, really. I have no desire to bed or love a woman who would merely bend to all my whims. If I did, I could have any woman in the land.”

“Then, go find one to fuck, and leave me alone.”

My mouth said one thing, and my hips said another as they tilted back and ground my aching pussy against the firm length of his thigh.

“I have what I want right here.” His gloved fingers dug into my hips as he pressed me down into his thigh, guiding the undulations of them .

I couldn’t help the soft panting or the way sparks bloomed behind my eyes. I struck at them, reminding myself of all the reasons I hated him. Trying desperately to remind my body that opened and practically begged for him that he was the enemy.

“Let me go, Raven.”

My voice was thick with lust. My words said leave me alone, but everything else said go faster, harder, make me lose myself in you.

“Come to my chambers tonight,” he whispered against my throat.

“No.”

“Then, you’ll come screaming for me in this dusty storage room, and I’ll keep you here until you collapse.”

“I have shit to do!”

“You’re right. You have to come for me.” His hands moved off of my hips and gathered my skirts up, pulling the bulk of them from between us so my slick pussy was bared to the friction of his thigh. Then his gloved hands found purchase in my delicate flesh as he dug them in once more.

“Fine.”

“Swear it.”

“I swear I will come to your chambers this evening.”

“For dinner.”

I rolled my eyes as my hips rolled against him. “I swear I will come to your chambers this evening for dinner.”

“Good girl.” He purred and slid his hands from my hips. He didn’t let me up from the wall, though. The slick leather of his gloves slid up the front of my bodice to wrap around my throat while the other held me in place. He tipped my head up and back so that I looked up to him, glassy-eyed and drunk on my need for him. “If you touch yourself between now and then, I will know. And we will have dessert in the Maw. Am I clear?”

“Fine, you asshole.”

A grin of victory spread across his beautiful face like the dawn spreading across a meadow frosted with winter dew. His thumb caressed my pulse, squeezing enough to darken the edges of my vision. I melted against him, my body loosening into the construction. “Mmm, like butter made with razor blades.”

I snorted a laugh and pushed away from him, and he let me. I felt his eyes on me, burning holes into my back as I made my way to Goose who was cleaning his paws. “You suck.”

Goose raised his head from his paw, looked between me and The Raven, then back at me before innocently rising and moving out of the way of the door.

The day slipped away like ice on a frying pan, evaporating into the ether with barely a sizzle to herald its disappearance. Silver came to find me to escort me back to the warrens, and I sighed with exasperation.

“I’ve been summoned to The Raven of the Dawn’s chambers for dinner.”

Silver was polite enough to hide his amusement with both my annoyance and my cooperation with the “request.” Not very well, but he at least tried. “As you wish, Miss Cricket. The Captain is currently otherwise engaged, but I can take you to his chambers to await him.”

Otherwise engaged.

I didn’t have the stomach to ask with what, and as we wound our way through the corridors to his little sanctuary, images of him fucking The Oaken Rose filled my head one after another until I was nearly simmering with rage by the time we came to the door I had memorized. Silver drew up to a halt at its doorframe and eyed me reluctantly.

“Plan on sweeping the room to ensure there are no assassins inside?”

“Miss Cricket, I wish I could, but this room is one of the safest in the entire palace. The Captain paid a hefty price for its security. No one can enter.”

He had mentioned that. I thought it was merely a bluff, though. “No one? ”

Silver nodded.

“Not even his betrothed?”

“Least of all her, miss. To be truly frank, I’ve never seen anyone enter that room but the Captain. I’m very curious as to whether or not even you will be able to enter without him.” Silver shifted, the leather of his uniform singing its creaking song as he did so.

I reached out and pushed open the door. “Supposedly, I can. What happens if I can’t?”

“Not entirely sure, ma’am. I’ve never personally seen anyone try, but I’ve heard stories that incineration is the price.”

“Well, at least I’ll be cute barbecue.” I slid my eyes closed and stepped forward into the room. I paused on the other side and opened one eye when no flames began licking at my skin. “Well . . . that answers that.”

Silver, the curious man he was, slid the toe of his boot across the threshold. The moment he did so, it caught fire, and he began hopping around, trying to put it out as he hissed in agony.

“That’ll do, miss. No fears of your safety with that. If you excuse me, I need to go nurse my foot. I trust the Captain can escort you back?”

His usually polite tone dripped with frustration and anger at his own imprudence.

I stifled a laugh and nodded to him. “Have a good evening, Silver.”

“And you, Miss Cricket.”

I didn’t hear him enter. I had seated myself at the window, pushing it wide open letting the evening air flow into the room and chase the ghosts of my own imagination out into the night. The table had been pushed away, and the massive wingback chair had been placed in its stead so I could watch the glory of the sunset and the stillness of the night sweep in over the book I had chosen from his small library .

I had already pored over the Onomastic Priority and had moved on to The Great and Mighty Legacies , a massive tome three times the size of all the other books and latched closed with three metal work fixtures. It contained the collected histories of the important figures in the peerage of the Fae. Of my specific interest, and it seemed that of The Raven as well, if the smudges on the pages were any indication, was the House of Magic.

I memorized the map of the noble manors, palaces, castles, and fortresses that were depicted in the center of the book. I hoped that it had been updated shortly before the war and that the landscape had not changed too much for me to be able to navigate it when the time came.

I didn’t feel him creep up on me, but the way his gloved hands settled on my shoulders and began firmly but gently kneading at the muscles sent waves of contentment and affection washing through me.

I looked up from the page, thankfully on a section about his own court and not the House of Magic, when he had interrupted. “Good evening, Raven.”

A smile the texture of down and just as light, bloomed in his face as our eyes met. “Good evening, little bug. Enjoying the book?”

“I figured if I was going to be here, I might as well learn some about the Fae of the land. I finished the other one already. You don’t mind, do you?”

It felt . . . warm and sticky sweet not to fight with him for once. It felt like we had been fighting tooth and claw for ages.

“Not at all. What’s mine is yours. If you have interest in the histories of the Fae, I could have a book or two brought up for you from the library. You would have to read them here, though. Humans are not allowed access to the library or any of the books within it.”

I laid a hand over his on my shoulder, letting our fingers lace together naturally, and squeezed them gently. “I’d like that very much.”

“Name the topics that would bring you delight, and I will have them brought to you.” He leaned down and placed a scorching fire kiss on the center of my forehead. “Anything at all to have you look at me like that more.”

“And how am I looking at you?” I felt the kiss singe away the paper-thin armor around me, curling up the edges into delicate black scrolls.

“Like I am not your enemy, for once. It’s intoxicating.”

“I thought you liked my claws.”

“Oh, I very much do. I also like to see your happiness, too.” His fingers tightened on mine. “I would enjoy any and all of your moods and passions, little bug, if I could leave my duties and see you thus every evening.”

The if in that statement twisted the sweet moment into bitterness on my tongue. I knew why the if was there. He didn’t seem to realize it, but I knew why it was there. It was a simple slip of the tongue, but I caught it. I knew that evenings such as this were but stolen moments in time between our other lives. I had a mission before me, and he had a wedding ceremony with the one Fae I hated more than his former lover.

I let a soft smile twist into my face to try and hide the acrid poison that had slipped between us and turned my eyes back to the book.

I could feel him frowning behind me, could almost sense him trying to work out what had happened, why I had retracted from the sweetness of his sentiment. The truth was far too deadly of a knife between us for either of us to acknowledge it.

“I’ll draw you a bath. Stay right there. Enjoy your book. Come join me when you are ready.”

I tipped my head back up with a teasing grin. “Joining me in the bath this time, Raven? My, my, how the days of ignoring you have made you bold.”

“Sweet little bug, it’s not a lack of boldness that keeps me from your thighs, but, no, I will let you enjoy your bath in peace.”

The teasing tilt of his lips matched mine perfectly, and I wished I could devour it with a kiss.

His fingers drew away from mine, and I let them trail over my braid and then disappear, floating away. I knew I should savor these moments, these small glimmering memories that I would take with me when he turned against me. Soon, he would marry that viper, and I would steal away into the countryside to figure out how to burn every scrap of the Fae realm to the ground and then, hopefully, back to the human realm.

He would be duty bound to raise his sword against me when that happened. I knew what the Fae did to humans that slipped their leash, even if the memory of Cypress and Rook were songs on the winds of days blown into the past.

I let my eyes pretend to skip over the words on the page, not seeing any of it as I listened to him draw a bath, test the water, draw more water into the basin, and keep testing it until he was satisfied. I set the book down and knelt on the chair, peeking over the top of it to watch him work.

His massive height seemed to dwarf the copper tub as he moved efficiently from a cabinet to gather the supplies he picked out. Each bottle was opened, sniffed, and measured on its worth before either being added to his pile or returned. Each towel was scrutinized and tested between two pinched fingers, and any that he deemed unworthy to touch me were returned. He hesitated after a moment of selecting all the items that he wanted, seeming to take a great while to decide on taking the item from the cabinet and obscuring it under the pile of towels before turning back to the bath.

He knelt next to the tub, rolling up the sleeves to his tunic to reveal scarred forearms the size of my thigh, the dusting dark mark of my long since healed bite mark still present. A network of nicks and cuts laid phantoms of themselves across the flesh he used to mix the oils, perfumes, and dried flowers into the water. Salts of some sort were poured in as he labored to ensure that the bath was to his exact preference before flicking the water from his fingers.

“Do you plan to watch me all evening, or will you be enjoying this bath?” he asked the copper tub before turning his eyes up to me.

“How did you know I was watching?”

“Little bug, I would know the feel of your eyes on me from a thousand yards away. Plus, you moved around in that chair like an overly excited pup. Speaking of pups, where is Goose? ”

I made my way to him since I had been discovered peeping on him as he worked. “You said no one could enter this room but you and I. I assumed that meant Goose, too, so I had him stay in the warrens.”

“Mmm, wise little bug. I’m not sure if he would be able to slip through the wards as an extension of you or not. He seems to defy most of the things I know about kin’tha or even failinis.”

I reached for the laces at the side of my dress, and he smacked my hands away. “Allow me to pamper you the way you deserve, Sóna.” Gentle hands rested mine on his shoulders as he knelt to take the slippers from my feet, massaging each one in turn before setting them down.

My fingers curled in his long hair. I had longed to plunge my fingers into his hair since I first laid eyes on him, and its silken slip did not disappoint. Even the golden threads in his hair, though they looked like true metal, were silky and pliable.

He rose, dragging his fingers up the sensitive length of my legs, and began untying the laces. “I can be as tender and gentle as I can be brutal, little bug.”

The laces came away, and he tipped my chin up to look into my eyes. My heart was racing. Every breath seemed too shallow to fill my screaming lungs as he looked into my eyes, looked through me, and into me. “Know this above all other things, little bug. I would never do anything to harm you on purpose. And there can never be anything you could do that would make me renounce that. Do you believe me?”

“No,” I whispered, unable to hold the truth back with the full weight of his gaze on me and his gloved thumb slowly stroking my bottom lip.

“You will.” A tender smile played on his lips, as if he was looking forward to the challenge of proving it to me. “One day, you will.”

He didn’t seal his pledge with a kiss, though it felt like he had wanted to. He merely towered over me, watching the way the candlelight danced across my face and caught in my eyes. Eventually, he bent and drew my dress up and over my head, followed by my chemise until I stood there with nothing but the string of beads dangling from my waist.

Rolling them in his fingers, he watched me for a long while. I wondered if he knew I knew what they were. I wondered if he had guessed that I knew when I had snapped them in the bedroom that day.

“I should get you a proper chain for these,” he mumbled off handedly as he pressed them against my skin, the sensation of the heated metal rolling against the tender flesh of my lower belly making me bite my lip. He abandoned them quickly after taking my fingers in his hand and guiding me delicately up and over the tall wall of the tub, ensuring I did not slip.

The bath was the perfect temperature, hot enough to make me ease down into it but not so hot that it scalded me.

“It was too cold last time. Is this hot enough?” he asked, tipping his head to one side.

I hated that I loved the way he wanted to know what my bath preferences were. A thousand nights of baths and making love in the candlelight could be in my future for all the effort he was putting into finding out.

“I couldn’t find the temperature controls. This is perfect, though.” I managed to ease my bottom down into the water and sighed with delight at the way every single one of my muscles seemed to relax in an instant.

“There are none. It is controlled by magic. Which means I will have the great pleasure of drawing and preparing your baths for you.” He grinned, mischief glittering in his evergreen eyes.

Oh, if only that were true, Raven.

I said nothing to his claiming of future baths. He had only a few days left of my time, and I would not scratch at him. I would hoard every little piece of happiness I could with him before I made him my mortal enemy.

His leather-gloved hand played in the water idly as he watched me. Peace and contentment floated on the rich perfume of the bath and enveloped both of us .

I tipped my head back and let my eyes slide shut as I enjoyed the heady mixture. It was not a brew that I often experienced, and I wanted to savor it.

“What does it mean?” The deep pitch of his voice rumbled across the water, and I pulled one eye open to see what he meant.

His eyes were fixed on the livid pink etching that was quickly becoming a deep scar in the top of my thigh.

“It’s a number.”

“Yes, I know what numbers are, Sóna, but none of the other humans have numbers on them. And this one is fresh, still healing. I know the hallmarks of a repeated wound when I see one. Your flesh does not scar easily. I have tried already.” His brows pulled down and concern warred with irritation at the idea of pain finding me without his touch.

“No one is hurting me, Raven.”

“Good. I would hate to have to skin Silvertree alive for allowing that. So, why are you carving this number into your thigh?”

“It’s a reminder.”

“Of what?”

Did I trust him? No, I didn’t. But I wanted to.

I sighed and sat up in the tub, folding my legs under me. “When I was a child, I had no home. No family. No siblings. No parents. In the human realm, they have a system—if you will—called the foster system. It is where orphans are sent to surrogate families to be raised. Some stay with one family for a long time and are raised with love and care. Others, like myself, are not so lucky and are bounced from family to family their entire lives.”

He knew the pain of losing family, but he did not know the blade of losing a family you had never known only to lose the opportunity at family over and over again. “Is . . . Is it the number of families you were placed with in this…foster system?”

I snorted. “No. That number is much . . . much higher than that.” I took a deep breath, remembering the unspoken words between the Bandrui and I. She had encouraged me to trust my instincts, like my mother had, and my instincts were telling me that I could trust him with this knowledge. “In order to survive, to keep myself safe when no one else cared about whether or not I was safe, I came up with rules to live by.”

“What are they?”

I counted out each rule, telling him each one. Some made his face twist in anger some in sadness, but he didn’t interrupt me as I listed them all out.

“And this one?” he asked, pointing to the number on my thigh.

“This one, I created when Rictus kidnapped me. This rule is ‘just survive.’”

He let the words of the rule bloom between us into a heavy bouquet as if he didn’t want to disturb its delicate petals. He could not deny that this rule was necessary, nor the reminder needed to live through each day under the yoke of being constantly in fear of being raped, beaten, or twisted into the whims of someone else.

He finally snorted a small laugh and looked up from the carved numbers. “You sound like one of the old Fae.”

I tilted my head in question, and he went on. “A lot of the Fae before the war, of the ancient generations, lived and died by rules. It’s how many of the humans would trap them into unbalanced deals or servitude in the human realm, back when we visited often. It’s fallen out of fashion though and the power that came along with them lost to the ages.”

I smirked, drawing my thumb over the numbers. So, I had been living as a Fae all this time without truly realizing it. All the small pieces of my life, tiny quirks I thought unique to the brutality of my life, made more sense every day I stayed here in the Fae realm.

I truly was both Fae and human. And growing more of each every day.

“Can I wash your hair, little bug?” he asked, drawing my attention back to him.

I nodded, and he moved behind me where he set down two bottles and a strange dark box.

He peeled off his gloves, and my heart skipped a beat at the intimate nature of this proposed hair washing. I knew he didn’t like our skin touching, knew that he metered out each touch like a bishop counting out each coin to give to the needy that filled up his vestibule. My eyes slid up to him askance.

A bashful smile played across his rugged masculine face and softened his green eyes into a dark meadow.

Guiding my head back to rest on the edge of the tub, he scooted a bucket over and let water from a pitcher flow over my hair, soaking it. The moment his fingers plunged into my tresses and connected with my scalp, lightning erupted and coursed through my body. Every movement filled me with the dawning sun and warmed me from deep within my very soul.

I bit down on my lip as he tended to my hair, working and lathering the impossibly long strands with diligent attention while I squirmed and panted in the tub. Every innocent swipe of his hands against my scalp, neck, and forehead sizzled the end of every single nerve and lit beacon fires within me as the warmth drew hotter and hotter.

“Fuck, Sóna. Please. Feidlimid’s teeth. Breathe. Please.” The quivering weakness in his voice echoed my sentiment so thoroughly that I thought he had crawled inside of me and stolen all my yearning to whisper to me. I purposefully dragged a deep gasping gulp of air into my lungs and exhaled it only to take another. “Fuck, this is torture.”

He rinsed my hair and disentangled his fingers from my strands, leaving it to drip into the bucket below as a towel was pressed into the length to draw away most of the moisture. An oil followed it, perfuming my hair in jasmine and honey scents. His fingers lit more fires as they danced across my scalp as he braided an intricate weave into my long hair, then tied it off with a gold-and-black ribbon like he had before.

He paused.

I could hear him trying to catch his breath behind me, and I turned to see he held the box in his lap and was staring down at it. His naked fingers traced the birds carved into the lid.

“I don’t have many things from the ruins of Breacadh an Lae, Sóna. I don’t have a great dowry to bestow on anyone. Truly, I am all but a pauper. The finery around you is not my own or of my own making. But this . . .” He took a deep breath and pushed open the lid. “This was my mother’s. One of the few pieces of hers I have. It is no great jewel that will glitter in the candlelight as befits you, but she wore it every day. She used to tell me that it was a gift from my father when they were courting. They had gone out hawking, and his falcon had entered a mating flight with hers. This was one of the feathers kicked off from his falcon in their plunge to the ground.”

He drew from the box a simple golden chain that had a single snowy-white gyrfalcon feather bound at the base with matching wire and a shard of quartz struck through with golden threads. It was not the great jewels of a prince or princess as he said, but it was the most beautiful piece I had seen in all the palace.

If I were marking my territory, I would adorn you in feathers.

His words came echoing down the branches of my mind, and I bit my lip against the crush of emotion in my throat.

“It’s beautiful,” I whispered past the razor lump in my throat.

He smiled bittersweetly down to the necklace. “You would have liked her, I think. And I know she would have liked you. She was a force to be reckoned with. Deeply dedicated to her family but also fiercely independent.”

“She sounds lovely.”

Sorrow curled up between us and purred its delight at our shared agony. We had both lost mothers. I was more practiced at it than he was, but that pain never made it any easier. I turned in the tub and reached out, laying my bare hand on his forearm over the scar of my bite. Warmth flowed through me, and I felt it drip drop by drop into him. I imagined the warm nights of midsummer in Michigan and focused on it, imagined it pooling with its tender memories in my fingers and like a small babbling creek winding its way into him. I imagined him filling up the way I filled up when he touched me.

I imagined the dark-purple nights of a lazy summer curling around his pain, and the waves of a calm lake lapping it away until the edge was dulled and snapped free to float away into a sky of a thousand star clusters .

His eyes narrowed on my hand and then cut up to me. Suspicion, deadly and sharp as the razor of his pain, glittered in his eyes for but a moment before it was covered up. But he did not move as I slowly retracted my hand as if I had committed some deadly social faux pax.

He said nothing, frozen, as his eyes searched my face like I had turned into a stranger.

He set the feather back into the box and closed the lid softly. I could feel him pulling away. We had both shared the open wounds of our lives, and he was pulling away.

Confusion crashed around in my mind as I watched the walls build up around him despite the fact his face showed nothing but a tender smile that he had shared with me so often. It was a nearly flawless defense, a nearly perfect imitation of the open well of his emotions. A casual decoy so perfectly constructed that, had I not seen deep into the well of his soul before now, I’d have easily mistaken it for the collected sorrow of a painful life shared with another.

“She was. I miss her every day.”

Even his words felt guarded and yet built perfectly of plastic emotion.

There were no edges to pick at, no openings to work my way back in as he pulled his gloves back on, wet though they were, and cupped the side of my cheek. Even the lust that glittered next to the suspicion in the evergreen of his eyes seemed a perfect mimic of the lust that always lived in his eyes when he looked at me. “Enjoy your bath, little bug. Stay in it as long as you wish. It will stay this temperature as long as you wish it. I’ll have dinner sent in and set for you.”

“You won’t be joining me for dinner?” I was scrabbling, unsure of where I had misstepped or why he was pulling away from me so completely.

“Not tonight, sweet girl. But I’ll be back in to see you off to your hunt in the morning.” His thumb ghosted over my cheekbone. “Unfortunately, duty calls even when I wish it were otherwise.”

The false tenderness made my stomach roil, but I nodded, accepting that he’d be off .

He rose, my eyes watching him as he towered over me. He took four steps away from me, and I watched his back drift away. I knew I should get used to this. There were merely four more days until I left this place, and in that time, I would need to be used to never seeing him again. If he saw the way him walking away shattered me, he made no indication.

He paused at the precipice of the main room and turned his head. “Little bug, do you remember what I said to you in the infirmary?”

I frowned and thought back. “You mean the storage room?”

The corners of his mouth quipped upwards slightly. “Yes.”

What had he said to me? I thought hard to remember anything other than the frustration of trying to be able to move my stupid legs. He had sworn something to me. I remembered thinking that swearing on statues was stupid. He had sworn never to lie to me.

“Yes.”

“I expect the same from you.” He didn’t confirm nor hint at what he had sworn to me, and it struck me as strange that he didn’t even bother to try to remind me. What would he have said if I had said no?

He didn’t wait for me to question him further. He just disappeared into the depths of his room and slammed the door behind him.