Page 30 of The Cruel Heir
“Exactly,” Sterling answered. “And Zara is with me.” He glanced sideways, eyes glinting, as if daring me to refuse the shield he’d just built.
A hush swallowed the table. For one impossible second, I felt… safe. Not trusting, never that, but buffered, as if the monster had turned outward, and pointed his teeth at bigger beasts.
Dessert was left untouched, since nobody had the appetite. Sterling rose, and offered his arm. Instinct screamed don’t, but there was nowhere to run. I placed trembling fingers on linen-covered muscle, and let him steer me out.
The butler, Horace, awaited at the stair landing. “Miss Johnston’s suite is prepared, sir.”
“Unnecessary,” Sterling said. “She stays with me.”
Up we climbed, one, two, three flights, through corridors heavy with cedar and oil paint. Portraits of dead Kingsleys judged every heartbeat. At the final door, Sterling halted, pressed a fingertip to the latch and swung it inward.
Heat and cedar and darkness. His room. Four-poster bed draped in navy, windows curtained in midnight velvet, the faintest ember of brandy in the air. I set my duffle on hardwood and didn’t cross the threshold.
“I want a room to myself,” I managed. My voice sounded small, but it held.
“Hummingbird,” he said, so softly it scraped my nerves raw, “every room in this house is mine. Privacy is a myth they sell to people with no enemies.”
Before I could spit back, a voice interrupted. “Turn down, sir?” the housekeeper called from the other side of the door.
“We’re fine,” Sterling replied, eyes never leaving mine. Footsteps faded away after a brief moment.
He leaned against the bedpost, sleeves rolled high, tattoos coiling over sinew. “We need to talk,” he murmured.
“About what?”
“Our engagement.”
My laugh broke like glass. “I’d sooner marry hemlock.”
He drifted closer, patient as winter. “Hemlock kills quickly. I prefer something slower.” His thumb brushed the hollow of my throat, claim or warning, I couldn’t tell. “We’ll announce at the gala next month.”
“I will never stand beside you.”
A smile ghosted his mouth. “You already are.”
Rage collided with helpless heat, sparking confusion. He’d taken my school, my money, and now my future. Yet sometwisted part of me recognized the offer beneath the iron: protection in exchange for surrender.
“I’m not yours,” I whispered.
“You’ve never belonged to anyone else,” he answered, soft as silk strangulation. “Sleep here tonight. Decide in the morning how loudly you want to fight me.”
I backed away until the doorframe dug into my spine. He simply watched, gaze heavy, an ocean tide that would come, no matter how many sandcastles I built.
Outside the window, the night sprawled, stars, city, nowhere to go. Inside, a king waited for me to choose which kind of cage I preferred.
And the worst part? Some cracked shard of me believed him when he called it home.
ZARA
Three years earlier, the quad scorched under July sun, when Chadwick rolled an empty Coke bottle at my feet, and called me the charity case. Laughter ricocheted off brick, until Sterling’s voice knifed through it. “Don’t cry, hummingbird. You’re better than that.” His fingers bit my arm hard enough to bloom bruises, proof that Clear View only respected pain you wore like armor. I left the courtyard with a new nickname, and the first lesson: weakness is fatal, when kings are watching. That was years ago, but the nickname stuck. So did the damage.
I knelt among Mrs. Kingsley’s roses, snipping dead heads, so I wouldn’t scream from the memories in my mind. Earth-rich perfume, sun on my shoulders, nothing but the frantic thud of my own pulse for company.
I needed space.
Distance from the gilded bars around me.
“Headache,” I told the staffer posted at the terrace gate. “I’m taking a ride.”
