Chapter 6 — Her Cold Blood
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She was terrified.
He could feel it — her heart going too fast, her breath too shallow, her body pressed against the wall with nowhere left to go. He had put her there. His hand was at her throat and his eyes had changed and he had done the one thing he had sworn to himself he would not do.
He had made her a promise.
The night of the wedding, in the silence of a room that held them both like a question neither had answered yet, he had made one decision about this arrangement — one — and it was simply this: she would not fear him inside these walls. Whatever else this was, whatever it became, she would be safe within it.
And then the dinner had done what it did.
He looked at her face.
She was not going to weep. He could see that — the way she held everything behind her eyes with a discipline that was not coldness, just endurance. She was afraid and she was carrying it and she was not going to give him more of it than he had already taken.
Something moved in his chest.
He loosened his grip.
His hand fell away from her throat and he stepped back — one step, two — and breathed. Slow and Deliberate. The way he had learned to breathe when the thing inside him rose past the walls he had built to hold it.
His eyes settled.
The room came back to itself.
She moved away from the wall. Not running — just moving, one careful step at a time, putting distance between them with a quiet steadiness that was somehow harder to witness than fear would have been.
She was limping.
"I'm sorry."
She stopped.
The first time she had ever heard a word like that from him -
Or maybe the first time she's hearing it?
"It is all right." Calmly ."You were provoked."
She went to the bed and sat on the edge of it without looking at him.
He stood where he was.
Then he crossed to her. Stopped in front of her. Bending to her level. "Are you hurt?"
She looked up. Her hand moved to her throat briefly. "No."
A silence.
"Are you certain?"
She opened her mouth.
"Are you lying to me," he said quietly.
She closed it.
"I smell cold blood," he said.
The words landed without decoration. She slowly looked up at him and he watched her decide — the small careful calculation behind her eyes — and then she looked down at her hands.
"I have a cut on my knee." A pause. "It is covered already."
"Let me see."
She reached down and drew the hem of her robe up slowly, revealing her skin until the wrapping was visible. White cloth, neatly bound, the maids' work — but at the edge of it a faint dark mark had pressed through. Small. Barely there.
He looked at it.
Then he exhaled — slow, through his nose. He stood up and straightened.
She was watching him. Reading his face for something he had not yet put there.
He stepped back.
"I will not be sleeping here tonight."
She looked up at him.
"I do not wish to cause you further harm." Just the truth of it, set down plainly. He moved toward the door. "Rest."
The door closed behind him.
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She sat on the edge of the bed for a long time.
She thought about his eyes. About his hand at her throat.
He had promised not to hurt her, not to believe anything she hears, they were all rumours.
Was it the blood that had done it — the faint trace of it through the wrapping, finding him before she had said a word.
Or was it his brother. The dinner. Everything that had been placed in front of him tonight one careful piece at a time.
She could not name it.
Why isn't he sleeping tonight with her?
She rose. Straightened her robe. Walked to the door and opened it.
The guard outside came to attention.
"Where is Lord Voss, where did he go" she said.
"His private chambers, Her Highness." A beat. "He does not wish to be disturbed."
Sera looked down the corridor.
At the locked door at the end of it.