“I was looking at the architecture,” she said.
“No, you were not.”
Her mouth softened at one corner. “Bold thing to say to a diplomatic guest.”
She did not sound offended. Offense would have been easy. Offense wanted apology, soothing, leverage. Cordero sounded as if she had set a small object on the floor between us and was waiting to see whether I would step on it.
“Accurate thing to say to one.”
Her eyes lightened by a fraction, then the lightening was gone. “Do all your guests get corrected in hallways?”
“Only the ones who test their escorts.”
She glanced, finally, toward the left-hand corridor. A concession. A small one. “Sounds inefficient.”
“It saves time later.” I resumed walking before the exchange became less defensible.
Her gaze flicked over my shoulder to the left-hand corridor and back. She had already marked the turn. She fell into step beside me.
At the second intersection, a junior guard came around the corner too quickly with a stack of service tablets balanced against his chest. He was young. Forty, perhaps. Old enough to know corridor protocol. Young enough to forget it when late.
He entered Cordero’s path.
I moved.
There was no decision in it. One moment he was approaching her. The next I was between them, my hand locked around his forearm, the tablets pressed flat against his chest before one could fall.
The vent overhead was suddenly the loudest thing in the corridor. The young guard’s eyes widened as he looked at my hand.
I looked at him and his pulse jumped. I could hear it. But fear was not the point. Memory was.
“Walk with your eyes up.”
“Yes, sir.”
I released him. He backed away in silence.
Cordero had not moved. Most humans flinched when I moved that fast.
Hell, most shifters did.
She had gone still, but not frightened-still. Measuring-still. She had watched my hand close around the guard’s forearm, watched the angle of my shoulders, watched where I had placed my body between hers and his.
She looked up at me. “Does dinner usually require a defensiveformation?”
Her voice was mild. Her pulse was not.
“No.”
She tilted her chin. “Lucky me, then.”
I looked at the empty space where the guard had been. I could have said it was standard corridor protocol. I could have said he had breached guest proximity. I could have said a dozen true things that were not the situation.
“Luck had very little to do with it.” I started walking.
She followed.
The dining room doors came into view at the end of the hall, tall and dark, carved with Ashenmere’s crest. I reached them first and opened the right-hand door.
