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A crash of thunder threw me back into the room as Zen ambled back through, a huge silver tray in his hands. I stared at him, gulping as I tried to make sense of the memory.
“Food!” he announced, setting the tray down on the tousled sheets, oblivious to my gaunt face and terror-stricken eyes.
Slowly, numbly, I pulled the covers up around me and struggled to make sense of the terrible scene that had just passed through my mind.
My very first memory had returned, and it was the ugliest thing I could have imagined.
What kind of monster am I? Who did Zen trust in his castle?
And now I was afraid I was really about to find out.
Chapter14
Zen
The storm continued until the morning, but when I curled into Mirielle’s body to silently reassure her that she was safe in my arms, she recoiled as if I had burned her. Stunned by her reaction, I shook her fully awake.
“Are you all right, Little Mouse? You’re having a bad dream.”
Her eyes fluttered open as I growled lightly, my words fully waking her from her sleep. She batted me away, and I bristled fully now. “It’s only me. Relax.”
Dread colored her cerulean orbs as she peered back at me, the expression taking me aback. “Miri, it’s me, Zen.”
To my surprise, her cheeks didn’t lose their tautness, nor did her pupils constrict. But she didn’t shrug out of my embrace as lightning crashed outside again. She jumped once at the sound, her breathing uneven.
“Are you okay?” I asked, holding her close. “You’re awfully jumpy this morning.”
She didn’t answer me immediately and instead snuggled in closer, which I accepted, keeping my arms around her, pulling her against my naked torso. “Were you having a nightmare?”
“Something like that,” she rasped shakily.
“It’s all right. It’s morning now,” I reassured her with a chuckle, placing a kiss on her tousled, carmine waves.
“Zen…?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you have to meet with the Council this morning?”
It was me who withdrew this time and peered down at her, my eyebrows knitting into a vee of confusion. “Yes. Of course. Every weekday morning. You know that.”
Immediately, I wished I’d worded my response differently, the disappointment on her face evident. I tried to backtrack my response. “I mean, if you’d given me a bit of notice—”
“No, it’s okay,” she interjected. “It was a stupid question. It must be the storm making me so edgy.”
“It’s only the gods’ way of washing everything clean,” I said to her, speaking words that my mother used to say to Cyndella and me when we were children.
“Yeah.” She didn’t sound convinced.
“The guards are outside as always,” I added, sensing that I wasn’t making things better.
“I know.” There was a wistfulness in her tone that broke my heart.
She’s going to go crazy sitting around here all day with nothing to do.
“Maybe you should get back into the greenhouse today. Word is that Lacroix is grumbling about me giving him an apprentice and then stealing you away again,” I suggested.
Nothing would happen to her in the castle now that I had doubled security and reconfigured the alarm system. It was a vigorous process to get in and out of the building now.
