“How nice of them to gossip.”
“Are they right?”
He sighed heavily as if talking to me was a chore. “Probably.”
“Then why are you locked up here?”
“I’ve already told you.” Marching forward, he led me into another room.
The ceilings were just as high, the walls just as gilded with silk tapestries of phoenixes, dragons, and cherry blossom trees, but the aura was different.
The rest of the palace felt depressing and dark—a living mausoleum that was pristine and sterile, but this place...it seemed lived in.
The purple and black rug by the double glass doors leading into a private walled courtyard was sunburnt and fraying. A stack of books lay on a low table, their spines creased by careless hands. A chessboard sat mid-game, a few pieces tipped over as if the player had got frustrated halfway and swatted them aside. A water glass threw rainbows onto the polished wood where it sat on a windowsill, and a white knitted blanket was thrown haphazardly on the slouchy linen couch.
Glancing around was like peering into someone’s utmost privacy.
“You live here?” I asked quietly.
He headed toward a wingback chair by the huge stone fireplace. Sitting elegantly, his coat billowed around his legs, pooling on the floor. “Are you looking so intently at my home because you’re nosy or are you trying to find a weapon?” Slipping his hand into his coat pocket, he held up the dagger he’d stolen. “Because I hate to tell you, but this is the only weapon in this entire godforsaken graveyard, and I doubt they’ll let me keep it for long. They never do.”
Wait...did that mean they came and removed his possessions? Like he was a three-year-old who couldn’t be trusted?
“Graveyard. Interesting choice of words.” Drifting forward, I lingered by the couch. Whisper leapt over the back of it and sprawled in a divot that looked suspiciously panther-sized.
“It’s more a tomb than a home.” He shrugged, intriguingly chatty considering.
If he was willing to talk, then I wouldn’t stop him. Perhaps he’d fill in the blanks, and my throbbing head would finally stop hurting with mystery. “Why do they take weapons off you? Aren’t you allowed ways of protecting yourself?”
“Not when I could turn around and use those ways to end myself.” He flicked his thumb on the blade before stabbing it violently into the coffee table beside him.
I froze. “You’re saying you’d hurt yourself?”
He smiled and it wrenched my heart because it wasn’t morbid or callous or cruel. It was achingly lost and exhausted. “I bet you’re thinking why I don’t just lie down and let one of those trespassers kill me if I’m so suicidal.”
“No, I—”
“I have no intention of dying, just yet.” His eyes flashed. “Even if I could kill myself.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
Awkwardness settled and I struggled with something to say. I settled on a generic: “Okay, that’s good—”
“Why is it good?” he cut me off. “Your little performance of caring whether I live or die is starting to piss me off.”
“It’s not an act.” I scowled.
“Liar.”
My temper prickled but I shoved it back. I stayed as calm as I could, smiling brightly. “I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s glad you want to stay alive. You’d think, if your blood is so precious, that they’d give you the ability to look after yourself—minus your oversized cat. Especially when trapping crazy women in here with you.”
His eyes narrowed. “Careful. You almost sound like them.”
“Because I mentioned your blood?”
“Because you’ve learned what it can do and now you’re curious.”
“I haven’t learned a damn thing.” I clutched the back of the couch. “All I know is it did something to me last night and I’m grateful for your help.”
“Don’t you want to know exactly what it did?”
Bracing my spine, I nodded. “Of course I do. But I’m unsure if you’ll tell me.”
My eyes never left his. I was highly aware that by talking, it wasn’t just him who could reveal secrets. If he knew I was the sole heiress to Snowflake Corp...would he kill me? He’d spared me this long because I’d convinced him I was here by mistake but...what if I wasn’t? What if they’d somehow known?
Don’t be ridiculous.
Even if they had known who I was, what were they gaining by bringing me here? A stupid lamb to the slaughter?
It would mean Snowflake Corp loses their leader.
On paper, that would seem disastrous, but in reality, they’d lost their leader seven years ago and were still going strong. They didn’t need me in the slightest.
“You’re thinking something.” He dug his fingers into the chair arms, his knuckles going white. “What?”
“Nothing.” I cleared my throat. “Just trying to figure you out, that’s all.”
He narrowed his eyes, studying me just like his panther did. “Aren’t you afraid of what you’ll find?”
“Should I be?”
He smirked. “Absolutely.”
“In that case...can I return to my pavilion and continue being anonymous?” I glanced at Whisper snoozing on the couch. “I’m not lying when I say I’m far too hopeless to help you. I buckle under stress and would much rather nap, snack, and daydream...preferably in that order.” I backed toward the door. “So if you don’t mind—”
“Step out of this place without my permission, and I’ll kill you before you can beg for forgiveness.”
I stiffened.
My heart hammered but my head stayed weirdly pain-free. The ache remained. The pressure in my eyes hadn’t gone but it didn’t get worse or rise to a crescendo where I blacked out.
Why?
He set my system on high alert and made every part of me hum with stinging awareness yet...I wasn’t afraid of him. Which made absolutely no sense and gave me yet another clue that I was broken by his company.
Rising to his feet, his sudden motion caused Whisper to leap to the floor and prowl to his master’s side.
“Come with me,” Lucien commanded, marching through another archway into a huge kitchen. A basketball team could play in here and have plenty of room without bashing into the black-lacquered cabinets and grey-gold marble benchtop.
Wrenching the cupboards beneath a huge black sink open, Lucien sniffed. “You’re to do as I say when I say it. I don’t want to hear excuses. I’ll punish you if you disobey. Get to work.”
Moving toward him slowly, I eyed up the bottles, rags, and buckets under the sink. “What do you expect me to do exactly?”
He scowled as if I had zero intelligence. “Clean, of course.”
My mouth fell open. “You truly expect me to be your maid?”
“Do you want to stay alive?”
“Yes—”
“Then you’ll clean.” Pushing past me, he snapped his fingers for Whisper to join him and both man and panther vanished into the walled courtyard.
He left me wondering how I’d plummeted from being one of the richest women in the world—a woman who gave away her substantial wealth just because it stressed her out—to becoming a lowly maid for a reclusive, quite possibly insane prisoner.
A prisoner of his own company.
A prisoner with inhuman blood in his veins and a life story I really, really wanted to know.
Chapter Twenty
