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Reyna was hard to figure out. I’d always believed that she wasn’t quite right in the head. Her methods for getting what she wanted never made any sense to me. She’d rather play games and mess with people’s minds than just get straight to the point, which is probably why she’d always failed to get what she wanted.
But it also made it tricky to predict her moves. What twisted schemes did she have planned for us next?
I shivered. Our room was like an ice chamber. My attire was prime for the moderate weather of Osavian, not the frozen depths of Murvort.
I eyed the mattress with a twinge of jealousy. The thought of lying down and using the blanket, no matter how thin, did sound nice.
“Emilie,” I whispered.
No response.
I crawled to the bed and climbed in, removing my shoes as I went. The mattress was so thin it hardly had any room to shift with my weight, so I didn’t have to worry about waking Emilie. She didn’t move at all while I pulled the sheet over my legs and up to my shoulders.
If I slept on my side, then our bodies wouldn’t touch. So I turned away from her and closed my eyes.
I woke when a body collided with mine, shoving me forward and tumbling across me. Emilie scrambled to her feet and fled to the bathroom. I was still half asleep when I heard her retching.
“Gods, kill me,” I murmured while rubbing my eyes. I rolled out of bed and walked toward the bathroom to find Emilie on her knees, hair pulled back and bent over the toilet. “Do you need more water?”
She cursed between a few unintelligible words. I assumed that meant yes.
I retrieved the glass of water from beside the bed, topped it off, and returned it to her. She flushed the toilet and leaned back, and I was delighted to find that the pot didn’t look nearly as horrendous as the shower did.
Emilie took a sip of water and sighed.
“How are you feeling?”
“I’ve felt better.” She took another sip and stared into the cup. “Do you think she’s poisoned this?”
I shook my head, sliding to the floor next to her. “I doubt it. That would be too easy for Reyna. She’ll have a much worse demise planned for us.”
I locked eyes with Emilie, who looked at me with a pathetic vulnerability. If she didn’t toughen up, she wouldn’t make it out of here alive.
She tucked a curl behind her ear. “What are we going to do?”
We. I didn’t like the way the word sounded on her lips. A grating reminder that we only had each other here.
“First, you need to get better. You’ll never get out of here if you’re still doubled over in pain, hurling into a toilet.”
“You wouldn’t leave me, would you?” Her voice raised an octave, and I whipped my head back in her direction.
“When did I fucking say that?”
“You didn’t. You just—”
“Do not put words in my mouth, princess.”
“I didn’t mean to. I thought—”
“I could, you know. I could leave you here. It wouldn’t bother me in the slightest. You don’t belong in Renoa. You don’t belong with Cyrus.”
I stood. Anger rising in me again. Fury at the fact that we were trapped in a dark room under the mountains. Pissed that Cyrus hadn’t listened to me. And livid that of all the people I could’ve been stuck with, Emilie was the one sitting on the floor beside me.
Emilie looked as though I’d slapped her across the face. She stood and moved close; her head coming just below my chin. She glared up at me with fiery brown eyes. When she prodded me in the chest with a single finger, I took a step back.
“What did I ever do to you, Ladon Castelli?” She punctuated certain words with a sharp jab to my sternum. “Were you born with a gigantic stick up your ass? Have you been knocked on your head one too many times during training? I would say you didn’t get enough love as a child, but I know Sophia and Cyrus too well to think that could be true. So what is it? Huh? What is wrong with you?”
“What did I say about touching me?” I grabbed her by her slender shoulders and slammed her against the wall. “Nothing is wrong with me. The only thing wrong is that I have to share this space with an insufferable brat like you. I fought in Fort Malek to protect you. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t even be here.”
