Page 31 of A Monarch's Fall

“Maybe to protect her delicate lover?” he shrugged, and his eyes grew sharp, cutting. “It’s easy to forget that you are so very far from innocent, despite your look.” He grinned. “Your hands are bloody after all.”

I instinctively looked at my hands. For a moment, just one dreadful moment, they were sticky red, a broken piece of bowl clenched between my fingers.

“Calm down.”

I flinched back, away from him, trying to wipe the blood from my hands on the cord trousers.

Arvid was suddenly in my personal space, and I hit my back against the wall.

He grabbed my shoulders.

“Percy, shh,” he said softly. “Now is very much not the time to have a breakdown. We are on a tight clock before we lose any opportunity to speak in private.”

I looked at my hands.

Clean.

No blood.

I looked back up at him.

“Come with me,” he demanded, taking hold of my upper arm.

I began to protest before a shrill beep of an alert sounded, and I flinched back against the wall. Almost immediately, I could hear excited voices from below us outside.

My heart raced, and I suddenly couldn’t bear the thought of being confronted by Dylan, Harris, and especially not Ana.

“Come on,” he continued, and I allowed him to lead me further down the corridor in the same direction as I had come from.

We continued past the corridor to the room where I had awoken, then farther past more joining corridors. The building was clearly large and laid out in a grid-like system.

He ushered us down a corridor as voices began to join our floor, and doors began to open and shut.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked.

“Quiet, please,” he said with bite, and looked behind us quickly.

We continued down the corridor. This one had far fewer doors.

“In here,” he said, stopping abruptly and releasing me to take a key from his pocket and unlock a door.

The door opened, and he pushed me forward, stepping inside and locking the door behind him. When the lock clicked into place, the edges of the doorframe glowed faintly.

He walked past me towards a cabinet with glasses and drinks.

“Sorry for snapping at you for speaking. There are some here with excellent hearing, and I don’t want it to be common knowledge that you are awake and walking about quite yet,” he explained as he took two glasses and uncorked a bottle of white wine.

“Why is it so important you speak to me before anyone else?” I asked as he poured the wine.

The room was a study of sorts. There was no desk, but there was a large coffee table, a drinks cabinet, a small sink, a fridge, a sofa, and four assorted yet stylish armchairs. There were two more doors within the room.

“I suspect this will be the only time we will be able to speak alone, unmonitored. Once they know you’re awake, you’ll be under lock and key, so to speak,” he answered and walked towards me, handing me a glass.

I looked at the glass, hesitating.

He raised an eyebrow and brought the glass to his lips, taking a drink.

“I’m not trying to poison you. It’s a fine dry white, made from grapes from our vineyard five seasons ago,” he told me.