Page 17 of The King's Pawn
When his eyes had met mine, something electric had passed between us. Not attraction—not then—but awareness. A sharp, unsettling sense that I was being seen in a way no one had ever looked at me before.
“Lost,Printsessa?” he’d asked, his voice low and amused as if he’d already known the answer.
I’d bristled immediately. “Don’t call me that.”
He’d smiled then, just barely. “All daughters of powerful men are.”
Before I could respond, Papa had appeared at my side, his hand clamping down on my arm too tightly for me not to flinch. His face had been pale beneath his practiced composure. He’d muttered apologies before dragging me away, later warning me very sternly never to speak to that man again.
At the time, I hadn’t understood why.
Now I do.
It’s a painful realization.
His gaze drags over me. It’s a slow and assessing measure of me. Not lustful, not in that way that should send a shudder rolling up my spine. This feeling is far more unnerving. It’s a pressure that makes my thighs squeeze together when heat pools between them.
He sets his chin down onto his closed fist. “Tell yourself whatever you need to. But you are here, under my protection, under my roof, under my rules, for the foreseeable future. Whether you accept it or not is irrelevant.”
I shove away from the table so violently, my chair topples back onto the floor. The wineglasses on top of it tip, red liquid spilling across the linens in a blooming stain that looks disturbingly like fresh blood. It seeps and spreads, reaching toward him like a living thing.
His frown is immediate.
I don’t care.
I don’t even try to apologize and soak it up with the napkin that had been on my lap and is now lying on the floor at my feet.
Instead, I turn and storm out of the dining room, my vision blurring with a mixture of rage and humiliation and something far more disorienting. Desire. It’s thick and unwelcome, tangled in with the fear that I’ve somehow managed to find myself sentenced to a lifetime in an inescapable prison, forced here against my own will with absolutely no say in the matter.
Sasha’s guard, the one from before, stands in the doorway when I finally reach the hallway heading upstairs. For a moment, I think he’ll stop me and drag me back into the dining room and force me to finish dinner with his Master. I brace for his hand on my arm, but strangely, it never comes.
He steps aside just enough for me to brush past him, watching me with the same dead-eyed expression he’s had since I arrived.
I storm up to the second floor to my room, refusing to look back.
Hours later,the fire inside the hearth in my room has died down to soft, smoldering embers. The glow barely reaches the corners of the room, leaving the walls looking darker and more haunting than they did before.
I throw another log onto the grate out of pure annoyance, watching the sparks leap upward like furious little stars before falling back into exhaustion, settling into the coals as if surrendering to the inevitable just like me.
Midnight comes and goes, and the silence around me only grows heavier.
My pulse hasn’t slowed once since dinner. The edges of my thoughts are frayed, everything inside me stretched thin to the point of nearly snapping. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know how I’m supposed to survive here without losing the few threads of sanity I still have left.
I’ve already torn through every inch of this room looking for something that could tether me to who I was before this house. Before I’d walked into my own cell and realized too late that the door had been shut and locked behind me.
I’m a prisoner in silk sheets and gold molding.
Rummaging through the dresser drawers, the wardrobe, even the bathroom cabinet has brought me no closer to finding a way out, either. Everything has been curated, arranged and staged as if this entire room was built to make a hostage look like a guest.
I search my bags too, finding nothing in them but clothes and my first aid kit. My laptop? Gone. My phone? Gone.
They’ve stripped me bare without ever laying a hand on me.
I hate it.
Eventually, when the hopelessness swells too tightly in my chest to stand under, I sink down onto the carpet in front of the fire once again. The heat ghosts across my shins, barely warming me despite the roaring flame licking up toward the chimney. I wrap my arms around myself and stare into the flames until my eyes burn.
I’ve been here for… I don’t even know how long.
