Page 12

Chapter six

J ust before sunrise the next morning, I heard three solid knocks on the bedroom door. Gemma rolled toward me and groaned. The smooth, heavy footsteps informed me of our visitor’s identity.

I nudged Gemma and whispered, “I think it’s Smyth.” That was enough to get my snarky sentry up and standing in front of me.

“Come in,” she called warily.

Smyth ducked, almost too tall for the doorframe, and nodded at my right arm. “Your bandage. It’s been twenty-four hours.”

Gemma offered to help, but he ignored her as he sauntered to my bedside, waiting for me to offer up my arm.

“Gemma, can we have a moment?” I scrounged up the courage to ask. Day by day, I would get better at speaking up for myself.

“No!” she snapped. “I’m not leaving you alone with him.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’ll just be in the other room.”

Her eyes darted skeptically between us. “Scream if he touches you anywhere but that bandage.”

Smyth bid her farewell with an annoyed grunt .

He knelt down on one knee beside the bed, careful to give me space. While he unwrapped the bandage, I stared at his scars. The one over his right eye, reaching down across his cheek. Another on his thick neck beneath his ear. A third at the top of his forehead receding into his hairline.

When he caught me staring, a flicker of shame passed through him.

Did he think I was afraid? The scars were brave, not ugly.

He had something to show for his pain. Ridges, like a map through his past. He had a story, memories, a life, even if it was violent.

I couldn’t even remember how I’d gotten mine.

“I, um…” I cleared my throat. “I never really thanked you for saving me.”

“You don’t have to thank me.”

His deep timbre lifted the hairs off my neck. Goose bumps textured my forearms while confusing heat crawled from my chest to my belly, leaving a strange exhilaration in its wake.

I swallowed hard. “But I do… Thank you.”

Smyth stood and reached for the cloth bandages on the chair in the corner.

I shivered at the sight of the muscles in his neck and shoulders flexing.

I hadn’t known a man could be so intimidating.

How would my mother feel about him here?

Like Gemma, she’d probably be wary. Their distrust was likely one of the only opinions Gemma and my mother would ever share.

As for my trust in him? I hadn’t really decided yet.

“Did Alistair Winterton and his grandson send you along with the others?” I asked. “To fetch me?”

“I don’t answer to the Wintertons.” His voice was curt.

“Simeon then?”

Smyth turned to face me. “I don’t answer to him, either. But,” he winced, “he and I have an agreement of sorts.” He tore a piece of cloth wrapping .

“What kind of agreement?”

He didn’t answer, knelt back down, and waited patiently for me to extend my wounded arm. I obliged. He cradled my arm like it was porcelain and might shatter.

The exposed wound was hideous. Teeth marks emerged among pieces of torn, mutilated flesh.

“Will my arm be okay?” I closed my eyes to stave off the mounting dizziness.

He must have sensed my imbalance, because he shifted closer and barricaded his knee between my hip and the edge of the bed. His leg felt like a boulder pinning me to my seat.

“It will likely scar,” he said, “but yes, your arm will be fine.”

I opened one eye, peering down as he added a light ointment to the ragged flesh that burned, then cooled.

I opened my other eye and admired everything else about him.

The wild crease of his brows as he focused.

His strong, straight nose. The powerful cut of his jaw, covered by a well-groomed beard that managed to be thick without being too bushy.

And my favorite thing about his handsome face: his deep-brown eyes that sparkled even though he wasn’t smiling. It was difficult to look away.

Curious of his reaction, I asked, ”Have you met Elias Winterton?”

Flames of anger flickered through his steady gaze, visible for a mere second before disappearing.

A failed attempt to hide his disdain. “Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.

” The words leapt off his tongue like a spark off hot coals, stinging me, even as I tried to pull away.

He didn’t fasten the bandage as tight as the day before, and when I went to tighten it, he ordered gently, “Leave it loose. It needs to breathe.”

I obeyed, flinching only from the friction as I slid my arm through the sleeve of a light-blue knit sweater my mother had left behind .

“Do you need anything for the pain?” Smyth asked, his knee still pressed against my hip like he was afraid I’d slither right off the mattress. “It might be worse today than it was yesterday.”

“What do you have?”

“Nothing conventional.” I didn’t really know what that meant, so I waited. “Alcohol,” he clarified. “But no more than one for you.”

“Oh, I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Phillip drank a lot, and it wasn’t… good.”

The wound was now clean and freshly bandaged. I thought Smyth was about to leave when his fingers twitched against my elbow. His eyes snapped to mine, concern and rage melding into… worry . My heart sputtered.

“Did he hurt you?”

“No,” I said breathily, then cleared my throat. “No.” Surer this time. “He was just sad.”

Smyth’s eyes narrowed, assessing me… for lies?

“Probably because he had to look at me every day as a reminder of my mother’s affair.”

“None of that bullshit was your fault.” I jumped at his startling aggression. “They were lucky to have you.”

“I don’t think they wanted me here,” I muttered bitterly, the words slipping out of me before I could stop them.

“What?” he snapped, his intense stare on me. “What did you just say to me?” The heated edge to his voice demanded a response.

My eyes widened in shock. “I… I said I don’t think they wanted me here.”

“Why the f—?” His voice was strained, his face contorted in pain. “ Why ?” Rather than retreat, he stayed where he knelt, body close, his heat encircling me like a warm blanket.

“Because I was so… numb . I used to feel like there was nothing alive in me,” I confessed, my body ejecting the words like a poison.

I cringed at my candor. I hardly knew this man, but I was a moth with thin, fragile wings drawing too close to his incinerating blaze.

“After my accident in the cellar, I felt like I was missing so much of myself and—”

“The accident?”

I nodded. “A few years ago. When I was seventeen, I fell in the cellar, hit my head, and fell unconscious. I can’t remember any part of my life before that.”

Smyth stared at the bed beside me and slowly nodded. “Do you feel that way now?” He rubbed a gentle thumb over the skin of my elbow, which he still hadn’t let go of. “Numb?”

“No.” I gulped, looking up at him.

He met my gaze in earnest, and my stomach clenched.

“They must be paying you a lot to take care of me.” I laughed nervously, anxious to fill the silence. “You seem a little overly concerned about someone you just met and only need to transport from one place to another.”

“I’m not here for money .” The words snapped out of him, deep and seething.

“Okay.” I swallowed a lump in my throat. “I’m sorry. Are you always this… grim?”

“Grim.” He raised his eyebrows, chuckled humorlessly, then carefully lowered and released my arm. “That’s a new one.”

“You just seem… weary. Angry, maybe,” I added, cringing. “Who hurt you? Or pissed in your porridge, as Gemma would say.” I cringed again. So awkward.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.” I surprised myself with my boldness.

“Of course it does,” he sighed. “That’s just who you are.”

His eyes darted to my mouth as I scrambled to retort. “You hardly know me. ”

He studied his hands, eyebrows creased in thought. My eyes wandered to the tattoos on his forearms. They spiraled around his triceps, past his elbow, likely up and over his biceps, shoulders, and chest, maybe beyond. I wondered what they counted. Where they ended.

“You’re right.” He stood to his feet. “And I guess you could say I’m here because I’m good at killing, and you need to be too.”

The heat in my belly chilled to ice.

“I’m not sure that’s something I want to be good at.”

“I can’t tell you who to be, Ary,” he sighed, discomfort flickering through his gaze, gone as quickly as it came. “I can teach you to think for yourself and survive.”

“Think for myself?” I laughed ruefully. “Within the last two days, all I’ve heard is who I’m required to be, what I’m obligated to do. There’s no space for my own thoughts.” The words poured out of me startingly easily.

“Then make space,” he countered. “Don’t let them tell you who you are. May I?” He gestured to the basin of water on my dresser. I nodded and watched, mesmerized as he rinsed his massive, calloused hands.

“You sound confident that you know me quite well after only twenty-four hours,” I continued, my voice a little too squeaky. “Enough to tell me what to do.”

“And I will continue to if it ensures you learn how to fight back rather than concede to others.” He gestured to the room, the house around us, implying that…

I had already given up. “So that you’re prepared to stand up for yourself when Alistair Winterton, his grandson, and their people realize you can’t be confined to their pretty golden throne. ”

Was it an insult or a compliment, to not… comply? A challenge, perhaps? To be something different than what they would ask of me. Something… more.

Or had he decided, after only a few hours, that I would fail before I’d even begun ?

“Don’t you think it’s a little presumptuous to assume you know what I need better than I do?” I feigned defiance.

His nostrils flared. “How could you know what you need if you aren’t even sure who you are?”

I gritted my teeth, eyes narrowed up at him. This man—so brutally forthright—lit a spark of anger in my chest. He made me want to fight back.

“Why did Simeon send you instead of Elias Winterton?” I asked. “Given his reputation as the army leader and my… betrothed.”

Something dark and hot burned through his gaze. His strong jaw flexed in discontent. “Would you rather your betrothed have come?”

“I don’t know, I… I never said that,” I answered. “I just thought you were supposed to train me to lead them, to save them, not hate them.”

“There’s a difference between what I’ve been told to do and what I plan on doing.”

My eyes shot open wide. “What do you plan on doing?”

Smyth’s assessing stare lingered on me while he dried his hands with the towel I’d used after my bath the night before. His silence should have scared me. Instead, it intrigued me, frustrated me, and I locked my stare on him.

“It’s still early,” he said, turning his back to me. “You should get some more rest today.” He paused with one hand on the knob. “And if you ever feel numb again or that you’re… missing yourself, come to me.”

Go to him ? Someone I hardly knew? Was he serious?

“That’s not a suggestion, Aryella,” he added tersely.

My stomach plummeted.

“How do you know my full name?” I rushed out.

Phillip, my mother, Gemma, and Oliver had never called me by my full first name.

They called me Ary. It had always, always been Ary.

I couldn’t even recall how I knew what it was.

A lingering truth from before my fall, perhaps, rattling around in my brain, waiting to fit back into place .

He stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “You’re my queen.” His other hand flexed at his side. “Of course I know your name.”

And with that, he left.

Tension poured out of me in a shaky sigh, pulse racing in my ears. My full name, in his voice, bowed me over, igniting something angry and foreign and relentless in my chest. Like a recurring dream I knew I’d had, but the details were… gone .

How did he know something I hadn’t thought about in ages? I hadn’t told anyone in this house that my full name was Aryella.

But it was .