Chapter 6
The days bled together after I arrived, and yet Cillian didn’t summon me for tasks, for meetings, for damn well anything.
If I were working for him, doing some tasks at least, I could distract myself from my current reality.
This inertia was worse. A week had passed since I’d ended up here, and I’d expected far more work.
Instead, I’d pored through books on my phone to escape, and Amelia had delivered an entire new wardrobe of clothing that was surprisingly close to my style as well as other toiletries I didn’t have. So I wasn’t without comforts.
Yet I was still confined.
I’d emailed the library my resignation, saying I’d taken a private position elsewhere, but I loathed that my favorite job had been stolen from me.
And I’d emailed my father, who at least checked in on me. A small relief I clutched onto.
Amelia had given me a layout of the areas within the Spires, including the higher floors I could access by staircase.
The elevator was off-limits to me, a reality that made me angrier by the day, yet my rage melded with a numbness that threatened to consume me.
I’d been trying to find anywhere with a balcony and a breeze here, and while stepping out to look over Peregrine City offered a transitory sense of freedom, the second I stepped back inside, my reality settled back in again.
I nudged the book at the base of my bed with my foot.
It had appeared on my nightstand a few days ago—Songs of Whimsy and Witchery—and the read had been fascinating.
Old poetry collated from all different time periods about witches.
The flip between what we knew pre-Awakening and the poetry from after offered a beautiful contrast. Certainly nothing I ever would’ve read in my hometown.
Oddly enough, once the veil was undone, the whimsy faded from the poems, leaving the stark, bitter reality of the struggles in their history. I’d been reading the mysterious book in chunks, savoring the passages.
A knock sounded on my door.
I peeled myself off the bed.
Amelia waited in the doorway. “Your presence has been requested for dinner tonight.”
I lifted an eyebrow and crossed my arms. “Is this in an official capacity?” If he’d wanted me to work, fine. But dine with him? Fuck that guy.
Amelia’s mouth twitched. “Well, I could tell him you declined, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“Oh, is he going to call his thug over to drag me out of the room?” I shot back. Apparently my sass was the one thing that hadn’t been stolen from me.
“We could, if that’s what you’d like,” Amelia responded coolly.
I swallowed hard. She wasn’t the enemy here, not really. Cillian was responsible for my captivity. “When is this dinner?”
“It’ll be starting in thirty minutes, down in the dining hall,” she said. “We’ll all be there as well.”
Her answer settled it for me, as I was going out of my mind in isolation.
If Cillian wanted to force me into interacting, he could deal with my salty self.
“Fine.” I huffed out a breath and strode over to the wardrobe, not bothering to wait for Amelia to leave.
She’d vanish on her own, the same way she usually did when she needed to update me or deliver something.
I slid on a pair of brown trousers, nice black shoes, and a tan button-up shirt.
My hair was a mess, my curls unkempt, so I went to the bathroom and sprayed some product in, taming them until they were ringlets again.
I didn’t know why I put in the effort—maybe because I was getting to at least be around people again—but the oppositional tug to show up in the same clothes I’d been wearing and looking unkempt also rose in me.
I sucked in a sharp breath and slid my phone into my pocket, a reflex more than anything.
I felt so distanced from anyone on the outside at this point that the connection my phone offered didn’t feel genuine.
I craved face-to-face interaction. Shocking for an introvert, but at the library I’d been used to the interspersion of helping patrons find their next reads even if I wasn’t too social in my daily life beyond that.
Time to go face down this new employer of mine.
When I stepped out of my room this time, purpose seized my feet, offering the renewed burst of energy I’d been craving. My aimlessness was what had eaten at me the most over the past few days. Now even something as simple as a dinner invite gave me direction.
I’d memorized the layout at this point, even if I hadn’t come close to exploring the upper reaches of the Spires.
The West Wing had been marked off, a small portion of it, but of course that drove my curiosity to distraction.
My footsteps echoed through the corridor, and I turned left at the end, in the direction of the dining hall I’d already poked around in.
Despite our habit of getting takeout together regularly, which my dad and I formed once I’d moved out, we hadn’t been the formal dinner type growing up.
We usually just shoveled food into our mouths before he was off to work or I was off to school, and then he’d leave me meals to warm up when he worked late.
Despite being a single parent after mom passed away, he’d done the best he could for me.
Farther down, the doors to the dining hall lay open, cool white light spilling into the corridor.
When I stepped into view, the enormity of the room smacked me in the gut.
Honestly, I should be desensitized by now, but the sheer volume of this space Cillian owned was startling as well as ridiculous.
I’d expected one huge table, but instead, the layout was more like a larger scale dining hall with many long mahogany tables stationed evenly around the room.
Massive metal chandeliers hung overhead, polished and gleaming with pale white lights that cast dappled patterns on the ground.
Blue, purple, and white stained glass decorated the windows on the far wall, creating a far too opulent space for a simple meal.
It wasn’t hard to spot where everyone dined, given they’d clustered around a single table.
Cillian cut the starkest figure, far larger than the rest, and of course at the head of the table.
He clearly needed the extra room for his ego.
The others were all familiar—Amelia, Charles, and the big ginger bruiser who’d hauled my father away.
Their ties to Cillian seemed to go way back, which made me feel like even more of an outsider.
I hesitated midstride, tempted to turn around and head back to my room.
“Come join us,” Cillian stated, his voice about as welcoming as the first time I’d met him—which was not in the slightest. He was in more relaxed officewear than the first time I’d seen him, but I hadn’t even caught a glimpse of him since then.
The white button-down created a stark contrast to his bright red skin, and the sheer size and heft of him threatened to burst the fabric at the seams. How he didn’t break the seats was beyond me, but they also seemed to be larger than normal, which fit for a demon-owned place.
His sleeves were even rolled up to the elbow, which I assumed was the most casual he got.
The man had massive, ropy forearms, bulging with muscle.
All of which signaled how deadly he could be.
His steady golden gaze hadn’t left me, so I forced my feet forward, even though it felt like entering hostile territory.
“Come eat,” Charles said with a friendly grin. He clapped a hand on the back of the big ginger. “Theo here made beef bourguignon, and it’s a delight.”
“We haven’t met formally yet,” Theo rumbled, offering me an up-nod. “Welcome.”
Well, already he was friendlier than Amelia and Cillian, yet I couldn’t quite erase the image imprinted in my mind of him dragging my father away. A chef, but he clearly held other positions. What sort of operation did Cillian have here?
I took the open seat beside Amelia, even though she wasn’t one of my favorite people on the planet right now either.
Better than sitting opposite Cillian, though.
A bowl of beef bourguignon lay in front of me with steam wafting up from it, and the rich scent made my stomach rumble, even though my appetite had been decreasing by the day.
The more I languished in my room, the harder it was to find the willpower to eat, to do much more than sleep or stare at the wall.
“How’s the new position working out?” Charles asked.
I arched a brow and met Cillian’s gaze. “Of prisoner? Well, it’s less than a delight. As far as being a personal assistant, I haven’t been assigned any work yet.”
Cillian let out a low rumble, but I couldn’t give a fuck. I was trapped here, and though I might be here physically, he didn’t own my mind. I hadn’t sworn obedience.
I forced myself to take a mouthful of the soup.
The flavors burst on my tongue but melted like ash, the same way everything else did.
It had only been the first week, but if the rest of the next ten years were to involve this level of monotony, I was in for a different sort of hell than I’d anticipated.
“We can get you started on Monday,” Amelia offered. “Cillian has a meeting first thing, and you can take notes.”
“Is he even trained?” Cillian asked.
Rude. No matter how you dressed him up in power and prestige, he was downright rude.
“I’m right here.” I spoke up, my voice even and low. “And I’d have whatever training was needed if you’d even bothered this past week. However, clearly you couldn’t even deign to make an appearance.”
A week ago, I’d been quaking in my boots talking to this man, but the fear had drained out of me, replaced by numbness instead.
“New guy’s got sass,” Theo said, a slow smile rising to his lips.