Page 9 of Thunder's Reckoning
“No running in the corridor,” he said, not unkindly.
“I walked the last part,” she answered, chin lifting.
“Good,” he said, and something in me cracked at how hard he tried to be good for a man who taught goodness like it was the sharpest knife.
I dressed her quickly, sliding the softer slip under the scratchy dress, smoothing seams with my palm so they wouldn’t rub. She spun once, letting the skirt float, and I hid my smallest laugh until Rhea appeared in the doorway.
“Ready,” I said.
***
GABRIAL NEVER ATEwith his mouth full. He ate with the room full of attention, with the weight of eyes turned toward him, with the kind of silence that could pass for reverence if you didn’t know what it cost.
He placed Zara’s napkin himself, fingers brushing her knuckles with proprietary care, the kind that saidminewithout needing the word. He gave her a soft smile—proud, maybe, to see his reflection in her face, then turned to quiz Malik on hislessons. The boy answered with his back straight, gripping knife and fork like they were the only steady things left to him.
Between questions, Gabrial’s gaze found me, slow and deliberate, the way a collector studies a rare piece to see if it’s worth keeping.
“You look very beautiful,” he said. “I like you best this way, obedient, polished. You please me.”
It was praise, but it landed with the same weight as a chain settling around my throat.
My instinct was to bow my head. My training was to bow my head. But Tallis’s voice—don’t give him firsts—slid beneath both. I reached for Zara’s water glass first, adjusted it so it wouldn’t catch her sleeve, then lowered my gaze. A defiance so small no one else would see.
He saw.
His eyes drifted, almost lazily, toward the balcony doors at the far end of the room. The sheer curtains stirred faintly in the draft, just enough to shift the light. His gaze lingered there a moment too long—long enough to make my pulse stumble—before returning to me.
“You moved the chair,” he said idly, as if making conversation.
“I wanted a better view of the garden,” I answered, keeping my voice even, though my blood was loud in my ears.
A slow nod. No smile. “Always good to know where the walls are.”
The words were mild, but the way he held my gaze made them sound like a warning, as if he was reminding me that walls didn’t just keep things in—they kept peoplewatched.
Then, just as easily, he turned back to Malik.
CHAPTER FIVE
GABRIAL
SHE SATat the far end of the table in the white dressI’d told her to wear, the color pulling a quiet glow from her skin the way I liked. Her hair was styled exactly to my preference—good girl—but it didn’t move the way it should. There was a piece missing in her shoulders, in the way her stillness sat on her like a garment she’d chosen instead of been given.
And when I praised her, she didn’t immediately bow her head.
Zara’s glass sat too close to the edge of her plate. Sable reached for it without looking at me, sliding it inward as if forthe child’s sake. Maybe it was. Or maybe it was the first move in something else.
It’s never the big gestures that betray a person. It’s the smallest shifts, the fraction of space they steal back, the angle of a hand when you move the knife closer, the way they stand a breath off from where they were told.
My gaze drifted to the balcony doors at the far end of the room. The curtains there swayed, just barely, as though touched a moment too long ago for any draft to explain it.
“You moved the chair,” I said, conversational, as if I hadn’t already measured the distance between its legs and the mark on the floor.
She kept her eyes on Zara. “I wanted a better view of the garden.”
A better view. The garden was always in view. And if she’d wanted it closer, she could have asked me.
I let my eyes rest on her a heartbeat longer, not enough to be called staring, but enough for her to feel the weight of it. “Always good to know where the walls are,” I murmured.
