Chapter 10 #3
“I know who she is.”
“Then you know you can’t speak to her that way.” He steered her away from the refreshment table, his pace too fast for her to dig her heels in.
The crowd parted around them, everyone who glanced at them clocking Kellat’s body language and expression and suddenly finding something far more interesting to look at. Her face burned hotter.
“She’s playing you.” She yanked her arm out of his grip and spun to face him. They’d stopped near the edge of the hall, half-hidden behind a pillar. “She’s playing you, and you’re too busy being flattered to notice.”
“She’s not flattering me, nor do I take it as such. She’s a diplomat.” He folded his arms over his chest, looking down at her. His calmness made her want to scream. “Touching is a gesture of respect among the vorrtan. It’s not an invitation.”
She folded her arms and glared up at him. “Oh, so now you’re an expert on their customs?”
“I read the briefing files.” His jaw tightened. “Which is more than you did, apparently.”
The words hit like a slap.
“This isn’t about the bloody vorrtan!” She stepped closer, her voice dropping to a hiss.
“This is about you. You bring me here, you give me beautiful dresses and spend two days making me feel like…” Her voice broke, and she stopped, glaring at him again.
“But then you left. You fucked me, and you left, and now you’re acting as if nothing happened. ”
His expression flickered, something dark in the back of his eyes. But it was gone before she could recognize it.
“This is not the time for this discussion.”
“When is the time then? When you’ve finished charming the warlady? When I’m back on Devan Station and matched to someone else, and you can pretend I was never anything but a case file?”
He didn’t answer. His face was closed, locked down. “We’ll discuss this later. When you’ve had time to calm down.”
“I am calm.”
“You’re acting out of petty jealousy, and it’s putting diplomatic relationships at risk.”
Petty.
The word went through her. She stared at him, her mouth opening, and nothing came out.
Because he was right, wasn’t he? She’d confronted the warlady because she’d seen another woman touching him and lost her mind.
She’d proven exactly what the warlady obviously thought she was…
a jealous little human who couldn’t control herself.
And he’d called her petty. He’d looked at her and called her petty, and the worst part…
She loved him. She loved him, and he stood there treating her like a child who’d embarrassed him in public. The tears pressed at the backs of her eyes. Swallowing hard, she ignored them. She would not cry. Not here. Not now. And definitely not in front of him.
“You know what?” Her voice came out bright, somehow. A miracle when her heart was breaking. “Think what you like.”
She turned and walked away.
The conference hall felt cavernous as she crossed it, every footstep loud on the polished floor. Her throat was tight, and she didn’t know where she was going. Away. She just had to get away.
Behind her, she heard Kellat’s voice, pitched to someone else, low and carrying.
“Human women. Sometimes, I swear they’re more trouble than they’re worth.”
The warlady’s answering murmur was too quiet to make out, but Delilah’s stomach dropped anyway.
She didn’t need to hear it. She kept walking, heading for the door at the far end of the hall.
It was small, a side door she hadn’t used before, and the air changed the moment it closed behind her, cooler and staler as she stepped into the narrow corridor beyond it.
Fury carried her around two corners and through another door, not the sliding type, but the swing door type, before it ran out. Slowing, she dashed at the wetness on her cheeks and looked around.
The walls were bare conduit and composite, nothing like the polished panels of the conference hall, and the floor was unfinished metal, the cold of it striking up through her sneakers. The air smelled metallic and faintly damp, like a basement nobody had opened in years.
She frowned. Where the hell was she?
A door slammed shut somewhere behind her, the heavy click of a lock following it. Gasping, she spun around. The door was sealed, its edges flush with the wall and, even worse, there was no handle on this side.
“No.” She crossed back to it, hands slapping against the metal. She pushed, then pushed harder, then slapped the panel beside it, and nothing happened. “No, no, no—Open this door!”
Her voice was loud in the silence.
Don’t panic. There had to be another way out.
She turned. The corridor ahead stretched into darkness, the emergency strips overhead dead. Beyond the first ten feet there was nothing but darkness so thick it felt solid.
Then something shifted in the dark.
Her heart slammed into her ribs, and she backed up a step.
“Hello?”
Her voice came out thin, the dark swallowing it before it reached the far end of the corridor.
Silence.
Her eyes widened as the shadows moved. Figures detached themselves from the walls, low and dark.
Run.