His eyes narrowed that I was asking more questions than allowed. “Elsewhere.”
“It’s a follow-up question. Everyone knows they are allowed,” I explained.
“You cannot just make up rules as you go along.”
I huffed. “Fine. But at least tell me what the punishment was.”
He glanced to the other side of the room. “We’ll just say, that when I told you I’d rather take a fortnight of torture than hear your thoughts, I’ve been there.”
My throat felt tight. The air in the room thickened, and to lighten the mood, I jested, “My thoughts were that bad, huh?”
He glanced at me with an intense look that sent my heart pattering in my chest so unevenly that I looked away, reaching for the stones to play another round.
This time he won, unfortunately.
“What’s the last thing on your list?”
I pursed my lips. “Pass.”
He raised a brow, his interest piqued. “Sure you want to use one of your passes for that?”
I nodded, definite.
He leaned against the shelf, his arm propped on his knee, watching me, just as he had done so many times before in between here and Alger. My breaths turned shallow.
“What was it like?”
Such a vague question but from his rough, almost remorseful tone, I knew exactly what he was asking. I looked at the ceiling. “It was . . . four months of . . . dark and cold. It felt endless. I still dream of it, sometimes it feels as if it is a ghost that haunts me,” I ended on a lift of my shoulder. I wasn’t good with exposing myself, and it always felt like I needed to lighten the mood, to belittle the moment. Others would have bought the indifference. I didn’t believe Weston did, and it sent a rush of uncertainty through me.
Handing him the rocks, a zing vibrated underneath my skin as Weston’s fingers brushed my own. He eyed me warily, before starting his turn.
I hadn’t realized until now how I was evading some important questions I had: who he was and w
hat he was going to do about it. And about what he was doing here, which I thought was all connected.
Bringing up the dark truth of that would shatter this exhilarating moment and I didn’t want to do that. But somehow when I won this round, I thought back to what Roldan had told me, about their people, about their inevitable boredom. And to now, to seeing how Weston always watched me like I was somehow entertainment, that I found myself asking, “I amuse you, don’t I?”
It was a simple question. A harmless one, I’d thought. Requiring an easy yes or no answer.
But when the air grew heavy, the silence morphing into something loud and assuming, I realized that the unpretentious question, was for him, something entirely different.
His gaze had shot to me when the words left my lips, and while the silence was suffocating me, I almost packed up the rocks and just left.
“Pass.”
My heart restarted in pure relief, a shallow breath escaping my lips. And finding the resolve to go on with this game, I thought of something that had been on my mind lately. “You love my horse, don’t you?”
He flicked a heavy gaze to me but didn’t say a word. One second turned into two which turned into three. “Something like that.”
My heartbeat hesitated, and just to calm the air, I nodded, saying, “You love him.” I cleared my throat. “One more round before I go see Gallant?”
And so we played one last round when we should have quit while we were ahead. Maybe if I had won, things would have happened differently. But alas, I lost, blaming the issue on the fact that I’d been too enthusiastic to see Gallant.
The stones fell off my hand, scattering to the floor around us. And with a sigh of disappointment, but the enthusiasm of seeing my horse again in the back of my head, I didn’t even think before I leaned over Weston to grab the stone by his side.
Leaning across him on my hands and knees, his leg brushed my navel, my side his stomach. My skin tingled, sending a warm shiver through me from the lightest contact, and the position I’d put myself in came rushing to me.
The rest of the air in my lungs came out in a shallow breath as I froze, just like I had in the hall. My pulse fluttered like a butterfly’s wings, my heartbeat in accord. I was so still, like if I even moved an inch, I wouldn’t make it out of this room alive.