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Roland bowed. "As you request, Your Highness, but I must inform you that shewillfind it suspicious when I suddenly take an interest in her affairs."
"Then you’d better be careful," Dominick said.
Whatever she was hiding, it wouldn't be a secret for long.
Chapter 3 - Rosalie
Rosalie's heart was pounding with outrage when she finally escaped Dominick and made it to her suite unscathed. The heavy wooden door closed behind her with a loud click, and she latched the bolt and slumped against the cool surface, listening for any signs of Dominick or one of his guards following her to try and drag her back.
Minutes passed, and as her heart finally began to slow, she was relieved to find she was alone.
Every dinner party was becoming more challenging than the last, and Rosalie firmly believed that Dominick was doing it on purpose. That he was trying to make her snap, lose her cool, and reveal her secrets. Tonight, he'd succeeded in making her snap.
But she hadn't made any drastic missteps. As she went over the night again in her head, she was confident that she hadn't let anything slip that could give anyone the indication that she had a secret child. Dominick suspected she was up to something, which was bad enough, but she still had a chance to throw him off her trail. She just had to figure out how and keep it that way until the curse was lifted, and they could flee this place.
However, the longer they spent locked in here, the lower their chances of making it out alive. Rosalie was conscious of that every day when she told Jay that they would get out of there soon.
In her heart, she wasn't sure it would ever happen—unless they found a loophole around the curse.
What Rosalie told Dominick hadn't entirely been a lie. She spent a lot of her time away from court searching for a way out through the barely visible boundary between the curse and the greater world, but she hadn't yet found one.
She had to. Right now, that seemed like the only way she could ensure Jay's safety.
If Dominick found out about him ... she wasn't sure what he would do. But he was a terrible, malicious man ... and that made her worry for Jay's life if they stayed here.
After taking a few more moments to calm her senses, Rosalie pushed away from the door and took a deep breath. She had to check in on Jay and ensure he was safe and sound asleep in his bed. She'd promised to be back in time to spend more time with him, but that promise would have to wait until the morning when he was awake, and they could go outside in the sunlight when there would be fewer vampires around to catch them.
She opened his bedroom door slowly, expecting to see him wrapped up in the blankets, snoring softly as he always did.
But there wasn't a lump beneath the covers. They were thrown back, revealing the bare, wrinkled sheets beneath.
Rosalie's stomach dropped as fear immediately gripped her heart. "Jay?" she called out, terrified that somehow she had tipped Dominick off about her son, and he sent someone to come back and investigate her suite.
Did Dominick know? Was that the real reason he'd tried to keep her longer after dinner?
"Jay!" she called out again, still trying to keep her voice low in case there were vampires nearby.
She threw back the covers and checked under the bed before noticing that his book wasn't on the nightstand. He must have taken it with him wherever he went. Rosalie hurried out of his bedroom and into the main sitting area, which was just as dark as she'd left it minutes ago.
Flicking the light on, she glanced around at her surroundings to find anything out of place. But it all looked like it had been before she'd left in a hurry to Dominick's dinner party hours before. If one of Dominick's goons had come in here looking for her secrets, she would have expected them to trash her place and her belongings to make a point, not go in and out without leaving anything out of place.
Did that mean Jay had run off of his own accord?
He hadn't been particularly fond of staying inside all day, so it was possible he’d decided to explore the castle while she was away at dinner with Dominick ... but she'd made sure that he understood just how dangerous it was to go out alone.
Yet he'd been distressed before she left. He might not have been fully asleep or fully in his right mind. If he left because he was sick of being trapped in their suite, and someone else found him ... Rosalie's heart sank at the thought as she dashed out of the lounge and threw open every door in the suite, frantically searching for her son.
She was on the verge of tears when she finally burst into her bedroom, and she stopped dead when she spotted Jay nestled up on her side of Rosalie's bed. It felt as though her heart would burst with relief, and she had to stop herself from running to his side and hugging him with pure relief that he was okay.
Instead, once she'd calmed herself, she changed into a sleeping gown and curled up in bed beside her son, relieved that he was all right and they'd survived another day in this treacherous castle.
***
Rosalie peeked around the corner and into the hallway through the crack in her door. Looking both ways, there appeared to be no one there.
"Coast is clear," she murmured and tugged Jay into the hall. She clutched a food basket in her other hand, and he veiled himself with a warm blanket.
Together they rushed around corners and downstairs, taking servants' entrances where possible to avoid being spotted by anyone still lingering throughout the castle.
