I smelled him before I heard him.
Lightning and musk and that faint sweetness underneath, like honey at the edge of fermenting. Coming from the wrong direction, not the door, not the window I'd left cracked.
The bathroom.
"You picked the lock on the bathroom window," I said.
"There wasn't a lock." His voice came from the doorway between the bathroom and the main room.
"Just a latch. Latches aren't locks. Philosophically speaking."
I hadn't turned around.
I set it down.
"The guards saw nothing," I said.
"The guards are watching a very interesting fight in the lower courtyard. I started it before I left."
"How premeditated."
"I'm more strategic than I look." His footsteps moved， that prowling, circling quality.
Not threatening. Just… relentless. Never quite settling.
"You've
