Page 47 of Beyond Those Gilded Walls

As I swept up the scattered crumbs, I felt Tallon watching from the balcony again, and my shoulders tensed up once more under his gaze. Before I realized my mistake, I looked up at him. It was only a moment, enough to see that it was him and that he still wore his mask, his hands clasped behind his back as he surveyed the ballroom from his perch. He looked more a prince than Prince Eadric could ever hope to.

I vowed not to look up at him again and returned my focus to the floor, though out of the periphery, Maricara had paused and tracked my attention. Now, I felt two gazes on me, and one was filled with far more malevolence than the other.

A mistake. Not a public one, at least, but a mistake, nonetheless. Maricara knew Tallon was watching us, watchingme, and I found it difficult to tell myself that she would let it go without remark. No, from the renewed frequency of the glances, I knew this would not be forgotten.

I sighed, clenching and unclenching my fingers around the handle of the broom. I wanted to be leftalone, to work and sleep and find the treatment and get out. But we hardly ever got we wanted, and given how we all came to be here, I doubted I ever would again.

The sun was half-risenby the time I left the kitchens, the cat still a welcome fixture at my side. Tallon was nowhere to be seen, and for a blissful moment, I thought I would have a reprieve. The moment was short-lived, though, as I turned the corner to get to my room and there he was, leaning against the wall beside my bedroom door.

He was a picture of entitlement, a careless slouch in his body as his shoulder rested against the stone and his legs kicked out for balance. The mask was still affixed to his face, and though he’d lost his coat, he was still far more elegant than I.

My steps faltered but I quickly resumed them, holding my chin high as I tugged the key from my dress and unlocked the door. I knew it would not be this easy, and though I anticipated it, the hand that shot out to wrap around my bicep startled me. I froze as he bent his head, refusing to turn to look at him.

“I know you were listening to my conversation with Prince Eadric tonight, little wolf,” he murmured, his lips brushing my hair. “What do you think you heard?”

“I would never deign to eavesdrop on the prince, my lord.” My voice was colder than the cat curled against my leg. “If you don’t mind, I am tired and need to rest.”

“I do mind. We have a bargain.” His fingers flexing was my only warning before he had me pressed between him and my door, one hand still holding my arm and the other resting beside my head on the door as he loomed over me.

Narrowing my eyes, I raised my chin. Whether he’d hoped to intimidate me or distract me, I had my eyes wide open and my mind clear, and I would not let him win this round of the demented game he played. His mask was still on, an intentional choice on his part given that he’d already shed his coat. “Do we, my lord?”

The emotions that flittered across his face were dulled by the mask, but I could see clearly the way his jaw flexed as he ground his teeth together. He lowered his head until his lips were level with my ear. “You choose, little wolf: your room or mine. We will not be having this conversation in the hall, but we will be having it.”

I bit my tongue to keep silent. Neither option was pleasing, and I was feeling less than accommodating for the man who had been lying to me at every turn, it seemed. Groping behind me, I grasped my hand around the door handle, using the surprise of it falling open behind me to escape his grip.

I turned and rushed inside, intent on slamming the door in his face, but he was too quick, and shoved his boot between the door and the frame, wedging it open.

It was hardly an effort for him to overpower me and push the door open, closing it firmly behind him.

“That was rude.”

“You deserved it.”

“Likely.” He stepped around me and made himself comfortable on my bed, stretching out and propping himself up with a relaxed arm behind his head. He still wore the mask.

I stood in the doorway, only able to bring myself to watch him. He looked wrong on my bed, but I remembered what he had looked like on his own bed, in nearly the same position, and that had felt all too right. I sucked my bottom lip between my teeth, chewing on it. If he had anything to do with the plague, with the deaths of my family and so many in Veressia, I wasn’t sure what my reaction would be. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

“Ask me, Odyssa.”

“Ask you what?”

He sat up, reaching behind his head in the same movement to remove the mask and let it fall into the blankets. “Ask me what you have been dying to ask me since you heard the pieces of our conversation. I have felt your outrage, your pain, and your confusion all night each time your eyes landed upon me. So ask me. I’ll only give this one chance.”

The letter to Emyl burned against my breast. The feeling of Tallon’s lips against mine and his hand in my hair burned in my memory. I’d already failed my mother, and likely failed Rhyon as well, and if I learned without a doubt that Tallon had a hand in their deaths, a hand in my own sickness, I feared what I might do.

I was already spiraling, losing myself inside this castle with each passing night. Distinguishing what was real and what my mind was fabricating was increasingly difficult, especially when each night was plagued by nightmares, and each day was plagued by Soulshades and mysterious castles and lies from everyone around me.

The doubt was enough to hold the shame at bay, to keep from wanting to scrub my skin raw at the thought that he had killed my family and thentouchedme. The doubt was enough to give spark to the hope that I had misheard and that the way he looked at me now, without the mask on and his gray eyes bright and swirling, was the truth and not another manipulation I’d readily fallen victim to.

No, I could not ask what I wanted. I could not bear to hear the truth. “I have no question for you, Tallon.”

His lips curved into a slow smile, like I’d passed some sort of test and he was pleasantly surprised. With a dramatic flourish, he fell back and settled into my bedding. “Pretty lies, little wolf, but so be it.”

“Would you have answered?” I blurted. “If I had asked, would you have answered?”

“Why don’t you find out for yourself?”

I squared my shoulders, an anxious sweat gathering at the nape of my neck. “What were you and Prince Eadric discussing tonight at the party?”

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