10. Chapter 10
Chapter ten
Laughing all the while to himself, Gavrin had left us at the entrance to what felt like a palace.
Its walls were tall and made of smooth cream blocks. I craned my neck up, up and up to the roof of pale beryl, domed and topped with a javelin-like spike that pointed to the sky.
White marbled floors with veins of shimmering grey lined the foyer within and led us up bifurcating, curved stairs. Mirror copies of the stairs continued on each level all the way to the sleeping quarters of the palace.
“It’s not a palace,” Kaedian informed me.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“I don’t have to hear your thoughts to know what you’re thinking. Everyone thinks it’s a palace when they first come here.”
Could he hear my thoughts? My insides went watery and weak at the idea. I didn’t think I could keep my venom or … other thoughts in check.
Lush curtains hung along the walls, offering waterfalls of colour throughout the pale halls. Draped in tyrian purples and cranberry reds, the walls could have looked violent if not for all the beautiful flowers in gold-painted vases dotted at each corner and on every console and hall table.
“Your bed chambers must be legendary with all the females who have begged you.” I reminded him of his quip earlier.
“No.” He didn’t turn but kept walking down another hall.
“Not legendary? What a shame to hear my husband-to-be is lacking in the bed chamber.”
I’d been admiring a tapestry to my left and didn’t notice the shadow that appeared in front of me until he blocked off any space around me.
“No. I don’t bring many people here.” His face was impassive as he looked down at me. “I won’t bore you with the details, but please don’t worry about your dear lord husband. No one has complained yet.” A rakish grin drew across his face as he leaned in a little closer.
I tried to ignore his nearness. “Killing people so they don’t complain doesn’t count as not complaining.”
His laugh was loud and full in the darkness of the still hallway. He pulled away and kept moving, but his laughter followed us through the corridors.
“I’m not calling you “my lord” you know.”
It was a ridiculous title. Anyone of some nobility carried a title. There were no lords, no ladies where I came from. So I wasn’t about to start calling him one.
We stopped outside a ceiling-height set of wooden double doors. The only light around us streamed from the picturesque window that framed the night sky.
“What do you want to call me?” Kaedian turned to me, forcing me up against the doorframe to keep from being pressed against his hard chest.
“Bastard would do.” I folded my arms to avoid getting any closer to him.
But he leaned in over me, a hand stretching above my head, hemming me in between the door and his body.
“How about Kaed?” His voice dropped a little lower, and the air heated around me.
His eyes seemed to burn like blue wyvern fire; molten warmth contained within them.
I felt his eyes go deeper than just where they looked.
His gaze made me feel stripped, laid bare.
And I struggled to breathe under the intensity.
Denora and Gavrin had both called him that. They were his friends. I was not.
“Not Kaedian?”
“Most people only call me Kaedian when they want something from me. And as you’ve said, you want nothing except to be rid of me.” He leaned in a little closer.
I hadn’t noticed until now, but he smelled like amber and something citrus. Bergamot and orange blossom. It was heady and bright all at once—a sweetness tempered with bitterness. I was filled with his scent while he pressed close to me without connecting.
“Call me Kaed.” His voice was quiet, steady but hushed like a whisper. The intensity in him had shifted. His words rested in the air, their weight settling into me. It felt like a request, not a command.
And with that, he opened one of the double doors and stood tall again. Freeing me from his cage.
Kaedian—Kaed—took a step back and offered the open door to me.
“Just like that? You’re letting me go?”
He held back a smile. I wondered what he looked like when he fully smiled?
“Hardly. My suite is just down the hall.” He gestured to the darkness, where I saw no door. “But if you’d prefer a cage, I might sleep easier. You might not, though.”
I stepped inside the room. “I suppose you’ll have to make do without your beauty sleep,” I jeered.
Some part of me expected him to invade the space he offered as my room. My quarters, not a cell. But he didn’t.
My eyes darted through the room in the navy light of the night. There were no manacles. No iron bars. No hard cot.
“Can I trust you, peach?” His voice hummed into the darkness, his eyes falling on me like he was coaxing me to play.
No, was my immediate response.
He didn’t need to know I wasn’t entirely displeased to be in the Eastern capital.
Despite the bargain we’d struck, I needed to get out of here.
But maybe not quite yet. I could bide my time, make use of this new city.
If I could find out anything about my family before heading south, perhaps this situation wouldn’t be a total disaster.
And it would give me time to find something here to barter passage with.
A lord ought to have enough riches that he wouldn’t miss a few trinkets when I did get out of here.
I turned then, arms folded. “Fine.” He could trust me, for now, I supposed. “But my name is Imogen. Use it.”
“Not Gen? Your lover called you Gen.” He bit the words like they were shards of glass.
“He’s not my lover,” I explained again. The knee-jerk reaction to refute Bray as mine, or me his, was instinct. The fight we’d had before everything happened was just an example of why we weren’t each other’s anything. We were too different.
But maybe Kaed didn’t need to know that. Maybe he’d treat me differently if he thought someone was coming for me.
But no one was coming.
And that was how it had always been. Looking out for myself was nothing new.
Bray was likely dead. I hadn’t seen it. I hadn’t seen anything when Kaed snatched me into the air with him.
“Whatever you say, peach. But I guarantee you, he doesn’t believe that.”
Kaed shut the door, and I heard a loud click as he locked it. There was a soft pop, and the seam of the door sealed with shadows.
“Imogen! My name is Imogen!”
His deep, rumbling laughter faded as he walked away, leaving me magically locked inside.
My fingers shook as they reached for the worn shell around my neck.
I gripped it so tightly I thought it might shatter in my hand.
How was I ever going to find my family? I was going to have to figure out a way.
Alone in the lavish room, I sank into the gloaming of my new world and found sleep came easier than I would have thought possible after such a day.