chapter 2: The First Conversation
614 Words
The inside of the castle was warmer than the courtyard but somehow colder than the wind outside. Stone halls stretched in every direction, lit by torches that burned a strange shade of blue, and every servant I passed looked at me for half a second before quickly looking away.
Nobody said a word to me. Nobody had to. I already knew what I was here. A delivery. A treaty wearing a dress.
The guard led me through two more sets of doors before we reached a hall that was different from the others, warmer, lined with dark wood instead of stone. He gestured for me to wait, then disappeared through a final door.
I stood there counting my own heartbeat until the door opened again.
Ronan didn't look the same up close as he had from the courtyard. Up close, he looked worse, in the sense that it was harder to be angry at someone whose presence filled an entire room without him doing anything at all. He was tall in a way that made the hall feel smaller. His eyes weren't quite gold and weren't quite amber, somewhere in between, like a fire that hadn't decided how big it wanted to get.
"You're smaller than I expected," he said. Not unkind. Not kind either. Just an observation, delivered the way someone might comment on weather.
"I'll try to grow before dinner."
Something flickered across his face. Not quite a smile. Closer to surprise.
"You have a mouth on you."
"I've been told." I kept my chin up, even though every part of me wanted to look away from him. "Was that meant to be a threat?"
"It was meant to be true." He studied me for a long moment, the kind of look that made me feel like he was reading something written on my skin that I couldn't see myself. "My father agreed to this. Not me."
"Mine too, as it happens. Funny how that works."
He almost laughed. I watched him catch it before it fully arrived, like laughing wasn't something he allowed himself easily.
"You're angry," he said.
"I'm furious. I'm being polite about it."
"Don't be." He turned, gesturing for me to follow as he walked further into the hall. "Polite has never gotten anyone anything in this castle."
I followed, mostly because I didn't know what else to do, and partly because some reckless part of me wanted to know what he meant by that.
"A guard will show you to your room," he said, not looking back. "Stay in the east wing. Don't wander past the library without an escort. Dinner is served at sundown if you want it, and ignored if you don't. I won't pretend to care which."
"That's it? That's the whole welcome?"
He stopped. Turned just enough that I could see the side of his face, the sharp line of his jaw, the way his eyes caught the torchlight when he looked at me.
"What were you expecting? Flowers?"
"I was expecting a monster," I said before I could stop myself. "Everyone told me you were a monster."
Something shifted in his expression, gone before I could name it.
"Maybe I am," he said quietly. "You'll have plenty of time to find out."
Then he walked away, leaving me standing alone in a hall that suddenly felt much colder than it had a moment ago.
I should have been afraid.
Instead, all I could think about was the way his voice had changed on that last sentence. Like it wasn't a threat at all.
Like it was something closer to a warning meant to protect me, not from him.
From something else entirely.
- Writer
