Fine. Let him stay. If he wanted to watch her sleep, that was his decision.
She made it ten minutes this way, willing sleep to come down and find her again. It did not, and the only thing more uncomfortable than having him sit and watch her was the pain pulsing like a second heartbeat in her chest.
When she carefully sat upright and pulled her knees to her chest, she found him still watching her.
“I can’t sleep,” she said.
His chin rested on his hand. “Clearly.” He studied her. “If you weren’t going to sleep, I suppose I could have allowed you to stay at my palace. Let you heal there.”
“I hate your palace,” she said.
That seemed to surprise him. “Why?”
“Besides the fact that you live there?” Grim looked faintly amused. “There’s no color. It’s so ... dark. I could never live in a place like that.” He said nothing. “You know,” she said, staring at her glass wall. “My guardians closed my window because of you.”
He raised an eyebrow at her.
“There was ... a loose pane. You saw it when we dueled. It was the only way I could sneak out. I had to tell them about it, to explain my ankle injury.”
“Can’t you use your portaling device to go outside?”
Her eyes found the floor. “I—I’m awful at traveling short distances with it. And I can only reliably go places I’ve been before.”
The portaling device was born of his own power, which he clearly had complete mastery of. She wondered if he would think less of her than he already did.
“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly. Her eyes abruptly met his again. “About the window.”
Isla asked a question she’d had for a while. “If you created my device, then how did it get to Wildling?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” he said.
All at once, a thought gripped her mind and chest. “Did you ... did you know my mother?”
Grim frowned. “No. I haven’t met a Wildling since the curses,” he said.
So how had her mother come to possess the starstick?
They just stared at each other. Isla watched him watch her and wondered if he would be the first to look away.
“Do you always play with your hair when you’re uncomfortable?”
It wasn’t until then that she realized she was raking her fingers through her damp hair like they were two combs. She immediately put her hands in her lap. “No.”
“Liar. I’ve watched you do it on no less than three occasions.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. Without breaking his gaze, she made her way to the end of the bed, so she was sitting right in front of him. “Here I was thinking that you couldn’t even bear to look at me, and you’ve apparently been studying me quite carefully.”
Grim’s expression did not change. “You are my enemy. Of course I study you carefully.”
“Right. Tell me, Nightshade,” she said. “What doyoudo when you’re uncomfortable?”
“I rarely am.”
“You seemed pretty uncomfortable when I stabbed you in the chest.”
Grim looked bored. “I’m used to being stabbed.”
“By someone you were trying to bed?”
