For one second, the room was just a room. A bed. A lamp. My suitcase half-open on the chair. The ordinary wreckage of flying too far on too little sleep and not eating enough to make my mother stop haunting me from three thousand miles away.
Then the silence outside the door reminded me where I was. I stood, crossed to the door, and opened it.
Dominic Graves was still there.
He had moved to the other side of the corridor. Three-quarter angle to my door, sightline to both ends.
His eyes came to me.
He didn’t saygood evening. He didn’t saywelcome. He looked at me for two long seconds, not long by ordinary standards but felt very long by his, and the line of his jaw eased.
The corner of his mouth flickered in brief amusement. He had decided to permit himself one beat of being a person before he went back to being a function.
My chest dropped a floor.
“Dinner is downstairs,” he said.
That voice.
Closer this time, even though he hadn’t moved. “At eighteen hundred. I will walk with you.”
“I can find dinner.”
“I will walk with you.” The repetition wasn’t negotiation.
“That wasn’t a question, was it?”
“No.”
“Right.”
He didn’t move from the wall.
I shut my door.
I leaned my forehead against the inside of it for one breath, then straightened, ran a hand through my hair, and got dressed for dinner likea translator who didn’t have a dragon stationed outside her room.
Translator.
Translator.
Translator.
My body wasn’t listening.
Rude, frankly.
I needed to ignore him.
I opened the door and he was waiting. “Mr.Graves.”
He nodded.
We walked. I kept my eyes forward. My body kept perfect track of him anyway.
Catch
Dominic
