I reach for the dagger at my back, but when he draws closer, I recognize his gait. It’s Gaven. My fight instinct turns to fear.
“Where is she?” I ask.
Gaven’s face is all hard lines. “You said there was only one way out of your rooms.”
I glare right back at him. “I lied. Don’t act like you haven’t been poking around.”
“It’s my job to poke around,” he snaps. “I’m one man defending a reckless woman against a fort of people who hate her. It’s my duty to assess threats and plan escape routes.”
“That’s my job now,” I say.
He narrows his eyes. “I may have been born at night, but it wasn’tlastnight, boy. You’re not fooling me and you’re certainly not fooling her. The only one buying your performance is you.”
I glare at him. “I vowed not to harm my wife in front of the Divine. If that’s not enough for you to believe I will protect her, I don’t know what else I can do.”
Gaven jabs a finger at me. “I’ve watched you—walking into every room like you’re the most dangerous thing in it.”
“I am.”
He scoffs and shakes his head. “No, you’re not. You’re too young and dumb to know the truth, which makes you the least qualified person to guard her.”
“What truth?” I snap.
Carter’s hand clamps down on my arm to remind me this isn’t the place, but I’m sick of Gaven’s superior attitude.
“The truth,” Gaven says, “is the most dangerous one in every room is the one who’swilling, and you will find no one more willing than Harlow Carrenwell. If you don’t know you’ve met your match yet, there’s nothing I can say to prepare you.”
I know that’s not true. She trusts Kellan and Aidia, and maybe that bartender she was whispering with back in Lunameade. Perhaps there’s no one she trusts entirely, but there are ways to know some of her. I don’t need to have her in totality. I just need enough to drive a wedge between her and her family.
“Then why do I know about her scar?” I ask.
As soon as the question slips from my lips, I wish I could haul it back. I just surrendered every bit of progress I made with her for the sake of proving something to her bodyguard. He’ll tell her what I said and she will lock herself back up like the vault she is.
Gaven’s dark eyes burn into me as if he knows me for exactly who I am. Someone not to be trusted. Someone who wants to use the woman he’s been sent to protect.
He shakes his head and laughs. “You were bound to see it eventually. What’s more pressing than your ego is that she’s already slipped out because you were more concerned with me knowing the layout of your manor than keeping her safe.”
I hold my hands up, chastened by the truth. “There’s a passageway from my room. I didn’t show it to her, and it’s well-hidden, so I didn’t have reason to believe she would find it.” I shake my head. “Where would she go? She was annoyed I wouldn’t let her go for a run today—maybe she tried to do that?”
Gaven frowns. “She only ran occasionally at night back in Lunameade and only because she knew the territory well. I swear she could sprint through those streets blindfolded. She’s more of a morning runner, though, and I don’t think she’d try for the first time at night here. She can be reckless, but that would be a lot even for her.”
I lean in close to whisper. “Well, I have no idea. I gave her a safe room as part of her wedding gift. No one can get into it but her, and she used it as a way to hide from me all afternoon.”
Gaven’s mouth twitches. “Did you mention anyone? Anywhere important?”
I shake my head. “We were in our room all day. The only place I took her was the art gallery.”
Carter and Bryce both whip their heads around to look at me.
“You took her to the gallery?” Bryce asks at the same time Carter says, “The sculptures or the paintings?”
I hold up a hand to brace against their questions. “Don’t read into it. She wanted to go for a run. It was the only compromise I could think of that kept us inside the manor.”
Gaven watches the exchange with too much interest. He’s far too observant—yet another reason he needs to die sooner rather than later—but the larger concern is the way my friends are looking at me like they doubt me as much as Gaven.
“Can you think of anything else?” Gaven asks.
I pore over everything I said to her this afternoon. The art, the toys. The book.
