Mia pulled back but gripped his gloved hand, tugging him toward the bed. “I need your help. I can’t get it right.” She settled next to the small drawing desk that fit in her lap, and once he sat beside her, she gestured at the page with her free hand. “What’s wrong with it? It’s too steep, isn’t it?”
Grayson tried not to notice how the glow from the stove highlighted her rounded cheeks and delicate nose. It was hard to ignore her beauty when she was the only thing he wanted to see, but he forced himself to eye the drawing. “The northern mountains are about that steep.”
She frowned. “Then what’s wrong with them? They don’t look right.”
“If you want to make them the northern mountains, you’ll need to cover them with pines.”
“Pines?”
If Mia’s brown skin and lilting accent hadn’t painted her as a foreigner, comments like those certainly did. Pines covered most of Ryden; how could she not know them? But then, he already knew she wasn’t from Ryden. As children, they’d had to communicate almost solely through the common tongue, until she learned to speak his language. Perhaps if he’d traveled beyond Ryden, he might be able to place her accent. All he really knew was she didn’t speak in the tight and clipped manner he did. A part of him wondered if her accent was unique to her.
In the beginning, he hadn’t been curious about Mia’s origins. But as he’d grown older, curiosity needled. He was twelve when he finally asked about her past.
Mia had stiffened. “I can’t talk about that.”
He frowned at the tightness in her voice. “Why not?”
She avoided his gaze. “When I first came here, I thought about home all the time. I used to ask for my mother. My real mother.” She cringed. Of course she was holding his hand, so he felt her shudder.
He gripped her fingers, a pang firing in his chest because he knew what she was about to say would be bad.
It was worse than he imagined.
“When I cried for my mother, Papa would hit me with his belt.”
Grayson’s vision hazed red.
Mia’s lower lip trembled, her voice growing softer with each word. “If I talked about my life before, he’d hurt me.”
“Does he still hurt you?” Grayson asked darkly, his jaw locked.
“No.” Her whisper wavered, and the vulnerability gutted him. “Not unless I upset him.”
It took everything in him to keep his voice level. “If he ever hurts you, tell me.” Papa might be a grown man, but Grayson was a Kaelin—he’d make the man bleed.
“It’s all right,” Mia said, though it wasn’t. “But I can’t talk about before. I don’t even think about it.” Her breathing turned thready. “Please don’t ask.”
Her anxiety was palpable, and he’d do anything to ease her fear. So he’d given his word and he’d kept his promise. He’d also started training Mia in self-defense and he’d had a conversation with Papa—and his own father—to ensure Papa never hurt Mia again.
But despite his promise not to pry, curiosity about her past still stabbed him sometimes.
A pencil poked his nose and he jerked.
Mia lowered the pencil with a soft chuckle, her breath caressing his cheek. Her nearness clenched his gut. “You didn’t hear me, did you?”
He leaned back. “What?”
“I asked if you could sketch a pine tree for me.” She held out the pencil and Grayson took it, unable to deny her anything.
Mia leaned in while he drew a small pine onto the mountain she’d been laboring over. When he finished, he realized she was watching him, not what he was drawing.
Grayson pulled back, swallowing hard as his cheeks warmed. “There.” He cleared his throat and held out the pencil. “You try.”
A smile played on Mia’s lips as she accepted the pencil, pulling back to return to the drawing.
Grayson tried to watch her careful strokes as they coaxed more life onto the page, but he ended up watching her instead. His attention kept getting caught on her lower lip, which she bit in concentration. In quiet moments like these, all Grayson wanted to do was pull her close and set his mouth to hers. Every part of him thrilled at the thought, but he’d never do it. There were a thousand reasons to keep things exactly as they were.
So he remained where he was, seated beside her. In this moment, he wasn’t the Black Hand. He wasn’t even a Kaelin.
He was only Grayson.
Chapter 7
Clare
“Has she stirred at all?” a deep voice asked.
“A little,” a woman answered. Both voices were vaguely familiar, but locked as she was in semi-awareness, Clare couldn’t place them.
“We need her ready,” the man’s voice clipped. “The king will be angry enough over what happened. He’ll be furious if he can’t present her tonight.”
“She’ll wake soon, I’m sure.”
The man growled. “I want to speak with Bennick. Get him, Grannard.”
Grannard. The name meant something.
Venn, she realized a heartbeat later. The angry man was talking to Venn.
The voices faded as she was pulled back into darkness, but she surfaced a little when she heard Venn’s unmistakable voice. She could almost feel the rumble of it vibrate through her, like it had when she’d been pressed against him in the tavern. “We were betrayed. Did you tell anyone else?”
“No.” It was the same deep voice from earlier, but Clare knew it now—the commander. His presence, along with the musty smell of the room, convinced her she was back in the sad room she’d slept in last night. “The only other person who saw her last night was Millie and she was told nothing.”
There was a period of silence. Clare tried to crack her eyes open but the flickering light made her wince.
The commander
