Page 7 of Thunder's Reckoning

When I was dismissed, the cold in the room felt like a relief I wasn’t allowed to name.

CHAPTER FOUR

BY MORNING, MYarms were still useless.

Every movement lit a slow, gnawing ache from shoulders to wrists, a burn heavy enough to make even the simplest tasks deliberate, lifting a cup, smoothing Zara’s hair, pulling the slip over her head. The soreness stayed quiet, hidden beneath sleeves and polite smiles, but it lived in every reach, every stretch. A constant reminder of how he’d stood over me the night before, watching without touching, until patience became its own cruelty.

Zara noticed, of course. Children always notice.

“Why are you moving like that?” she asked as I buttoned the back of her dress.

“Just tired,” I said lightly. “Held something heavy yesterday.”

Her brow pinched. “What was it?”

I smoothed the fabric over her shoulders, hiding the pause in my hands. “Nothing you need to worry about, sweetie. You ready for lessons?”

She nodded, but her mouth stayed tight.

Malik was already in the hall, posture perfect, hands clasped behind his back—trained to be still under Gabrial’s gaze. He gave me a single, quick glance before looking straight ahead again, the smallest flicker of his eyes asking if I was all right without speaking. I gave him the faintest nod before the housekeeper’s arrival forced us into silence.

The morning passed in its usual rhythm, lessons, meals, the measured shuffle from one permitted space to another, but everything felt heavier, slower. Every footstep seemed too loud, every door closing too sharp, as if the walls themselves were waiting to report back to him.

I sat on the balcony overlooking the garden, a pen balanced over a blank page in my lap. My thoughts drifted like smoke, tempting and untouchable. Even if I dared trap them in ink, Gabrial would read them. He readeverything—lists, idle doodles, the margin notes in books he has me read, his neat red corrections proof that nothing in this house belonged entirely to me.

Above the carved stone railing, a discreet camera stared toward the garden path, not quite aimed at me, but close enough that turning my head would place my face in its glass eye. I kept still, letting the warm air brush my skin like a hand I couldn’t shake off, knowing it wasn’t the wind I felt, but him.

From the window to my right came the faintest sound, not footsteps, but the subtle shift of curtain rings along a rod. The prickle started at the base of my neck and crawled upward.

“Don’t look,” a voice breathed from behind the curtain. Familiar.

My gaze stayed on the garden. “You shouldn’t be here, Tallis,” I whispered, barely moving my lips.

“Just listen,” he murmured, the curtain’s edge trembling, his shadow a smear along the floorboards. If the light shifted wrong, the camera would catch him. “Move your chair closer to my voice.”

I lowered my eyes and did as he asked, pretending to study the lines in my palm against the paper. “Okay,” I said, the word a thread.

“He watches your every move,” Tallis said, his voice angled toward the wall.

A breath in. A breath out. “I know.”

“More than usual.”

The truth pressed against my ribs like weight. “What can I do?” My voice was smaller than I meant it to be.

“Sometimes it’s not about what you do. Sometimes it’s about what he dreams you might.”

He must dream a lot, I thought.

“I want you to listen,” Tallis said, his shadow shifting again. I leaned ever so slightly, as if my attention had caught on some bird in the trees, shielding him from the camera’s view.

I turned a page in my notebook, then another, the act a poor shield but something to do with my hands. “You shouldn’t be here,” I repeated, because truth sometimes needed to be said twice before it could root itself.

“They’re sending Zara,” he said. “To the Circle.”

The words hit like a fist to the lungs.

“No—she’s too young. She’s not ready—”