I rolled my eyes.
Rhain’s smile sharpened like he had been waiting for proof I was still irritable. Behind me, Dominic’s weight shifted. But Rhain’s faint smile stayed exactly where it was.
“The three of us,” Rhain said, “are already in a conversation you haven’t been given the language to understand.”
My throat went dry. “That sounds dramatic.”
“It is.” He held the look. “Unfortunately.”
He stepped aside then. Giving me the corridor, the choice, the escape route, and the very irritating knowledge that he knew I needed all three. “Go to the library, little lamb.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“No.”
I stared at him.
He gave me the smallest, most infuriating smile I had ever seen. “I like getting a rise out of you.”
“That isn’t a sound diplomatic strategy.”
“No,” he said. “It’s personal.”
I moved past him before I could decide whether I wanted to hit him, interrogate him, or ask him what exactly he thought I had gotten wrong.
I went to the library.
* * *
The balcony was at the end of the library on the eighth floor, andat one in the morning on Friday, it was the only place in the compound that wasn’t full of staff preparing for the state dinner.
I wasn’t supposed to be there.
The library closed at midnight to non-residents, which I was. The aide who had walked me back to my quarters after the late prep meeting had wished me goodnight.
Then I hadn’t gone to bed.
I had meant to look up claims. Rhain’s warning in the corridor had been sitting in the back of my mind all afternoon, precise and inconvenient.
The older sections.
Fine. Tomorrow, I would find the older sections. Tomorrow, I would pull whatever clan-approved mythological nonsense passed for public knowledge and compare it against the agency files.
Tonight, I had eighteen hours until the state dinner, six pages of translation notes to reconcile, three unresolved clauses to memorize, and exactly no patience left for dragons, claims, or men who delivered ominous research assignments with cheekbones.
So I took the back stairwell.
Four floors up. Through the dark library. Out to the balcony at twelve forty-seven, because what I wanted, more than answers, was one square foot of Ashenmere that didn’t have a person in it.
I knew Dominic had followed me.
I heard him in the stairwell on the third floor and stopped pretending not to by the fifth. He didn’t close the distance. He didn’t announce himself. He walked in his usual position behind me and let me take the back stairwell at one in the morning because the alternative was making me ask him for privacy.
Neither of us was going to survive that conversation tonight.
He stopped somewhere inside the library. I felt him stop. I didn’t turn around to confirm it.
The view from the balcony was ridiculous. The Sound at one a.m. was a long black surface with three ferry lights moving south. The sky was clear and thin, with the stars the Pacific coast produced when itwanted you to feel small and underdressed.