Closer
1306 Words
FARAH
Morning comes late.
Not because the sun is slow, but because the palace is still moving long after the night should have ended.
I wake to the quiet kind of noise that means activity — footsteps in corridors, doors opening and closing, voices kept deliberately low. It has a different rhythm from the usual mornings here. Tighter. More purposeful.
He moved on the information.
For a moment I lie still in the bed, staring at the ceiling the way I did when he left, my thoughts circling the same place they circled last night — the look on his face in the lamplight, the pause in the doorway, the way his hand tightened on the frame like he had to physically stop himself from doing something he hadn’t decided how to do yet.
Then the practical part of me pushes the rest aside.
If he acted on what I told him, the palace will be in motion today.
I sit up.
By the time I’m dressed the corridor outside my room is louder than usual. Two guards I don’t recognize pass the door at a brisk pace, speaking quietly to each other. One of them glances in as he goes by, noticing the door open, noticing me.
His gaze lingers a second longer than it normally would.
Information moves fast here.
I step into the hallway.
The air feels different. Charged, the way it does before a storm, except the storm already happened and now everyone is moving through the aftermath.
When I reach the stairs I nearly run into Marcus.
He stops short when he sees me, and for a moment he just looks at me with an expression that is halfway between curiosity and reluctant respect.
“Well,” he says finally.
“That’s an ominous beginning,” I say.
He folds his arms. “Did you enjoy your evening conversation with our fearless leader?”
I feel my face go warm despite myself. “I wouldn’t call it enjoyable.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I look at him steadily. “I gave him information.”
Marcus studies me for a long moment, his eyes narrowing slightly, like he is fitting a new piece into a puzzle he has been building for months.
“That explains it,” he says.
“Explains what.”
“The fact that Dante has been reorganizing half the territory since three in the morning.”
My eyebrows lift.
“Three?”
“Three,” Marcus confirms. “Supply routes. Rogue movement. Two separate scouting teams already out. A third leaving within the hour.”
He tilts his head slightly, watching my reaction.
“You told him something useful.”
“I told him something I should have told him sooner.”
Marcus’s mouth twitches.
“That,” he says dryly, “is the closest thing to an apology I’ve ever heard from you.”
“It wasn’t an apology.”
“No,” he agrees. “It wasn’t.”
He pushes away from the wall and starts down the stairs, then pauses and glances back at me.
“You might want to come downstairs.”
“Why.”
“Because,” he says, “when Dante Monroe starts moving this fast, it usually means he’s about to break something.”
He studies me for another second.
“And I have a feeling,” he adds, “that whatever he’s about to break has something to do with you.”
He continues down the stairs before I can respond.
I follow more slowly.
The main hall is already awake when I reach it. Maps cover the long table in the center of the room. Three men I recognize as captains are standing around it, speaking in low, intense voices while one of them marks something with a pen.
And at the head of the table—
Dante.
He’s changed his shirt but the rest of him looks exactly the same as he did last night: controlled, focused, the same sharp stillness he had while listening to me in my room.
He is leaning over the table, one hand braced against the wood while the other traces a line across the map.
The room quiets slightly when I enter.
Not completely. But enough that I notice it.
Dante looks up.
For a second nothing moves between us except recognition — the silent acknowledgment of the conversation we had only a few hours ago.
Then his gaze shifts briefly to the captains around the table.
“Give us a moment,” he says.
They don’t question it. Chairs scrape quietly as they move away, gathering papers and stepping toward the far side of the hall.
Within seconds the space around the table belongs to the two of us.
I walk closer.
“You moved fast,” I say.
His eyes study my face carefully, like he’s looking for something specific there.
“You were right about the routes,” he says.
Relief moves through me before I can stop it.
“They confirmed it?”
“One of the outposts reported unusual movement at dawn,” he says. “Exactly where you said it would be.”
He straightens slightly, watching me.
“You may have just cut off one of Declan’s primary supply lines.”
I look down at the map.
The line he traced is bold and deliberate.
“That will make him angry,” I say.
“Yes,” Dante says quietly.
There’s a pause.
Then he adds,
“That’s the point.”
Silence settles between us again, heavier this time.
Up close I can see the faint shadow of exhaustion around his eyes. He didn’t sleep.
“You didn’t go to bed,” I say.
“No.”
“You’ve been working since you left my room.”
“Yes.”
I exhale slowly.
“You should sleep.”
Something almost amused moves through his expression.
“You sound like Marcus.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
His gaze shifts briefly to the map again, then back to me.
“You trusted me with information you had every reason to keep,” he says. “That changes things.”
My stomach tightens slightly.
“How.”
“It means,” he says slowly, “that the line between us moved.”
The words hang in the air between us.
Last night I thought something had shifted.
Hearing him say it out loud makes it real in a different way.
“And where is the line now?” I ask.
His eyes hold mine.
“Closer,” he says.
Not threatening.
Not cautious.
Just a statement.
Then he glances at the staircase behind me.
“You haven’t eaten.”
“That’s not the point.”
“It is if you’re going to stay conscious while this place turns into controlled chaos for the next twelve hours.”
I open my mouth to argue, but he lifts a hand slightly.
“Eat,” he says.
That quiet authority again.
The one that is somehow easier to follow now than it used to be.
I hesitate for half a second.
Then I turn toward the kitchen corridor.
Behind me I hear him shift his attention back to the captains.
The room fills again with quiet strategy and movement.
But as I reach the doorway, his voice stops me.
“Wait.”
I turn back.
He’s looking at me with that same open, unarmored expression from last night.
“For the record,” he says quietly, “I came back from the fight.”
I blink.
“Yes,” I say.
His mouth moves just slightly.
“You don’t have to watch the window tonight.”
And for some reason, that simple sentence settles somewhere deep in my chest like it belongs there.
- Writer
