top of his.
“Of course,” Tor responds with a smile, looking over his shoulder at me. “Goodnight, Clarissa.”
The queen turns her back on me and strolls towards her throne. Bold move, turning her back on someone she considers her enemy. Tor’s eyes apologise as he walks away, and I know he’d rather be here with me. That’s the only thing that stops me from following.
Reaching up, I rub at the place in chest where my bonds reside. Where is Vaeril? I obviously upset him when I agreed to dance with Tor. Uncertainty and anxiety war within me, and I feel so out of place here, which is probably exactly how the queen wants me to feel.
A hand touches my arm, startling me from glaring at the queen’s back, and I know I’m attracting attention. Taking a deep breath, I turn with a smile and see that Saril has made her way over. She is watching me with a worried expression. Her partner at her side, however, is wearing a joyful smile, chuckling quietly to himself.
“Why don’t we come to these things more often, Saril?” Taelir exclaims. “That was the most entertainment I’ve had in years.”
The elves, I decide, are trying to kill me.
“Come on, princess, lift those knees!” Eldrin shouts from the other side of the training area. At least, it feels like that’s Eldrin’s intention with this workout.
Lungs wheezing, chest heaving, and with my heart threatening to pound itself right out of my chest, I make a rude gesture towards the tyrannical elf as I lean forward, resting my hands on my knees. I focus on trying to slow my breathing, closing my eyes and concentrating on the rise and fall of my chest and the sound of the air entering and leaving my lungs.
How did I go from feeling like a princess at the beginning of last night to this? I ponder dryly, and I wonder if that’s exactly why Eldrin demanded that I train today—to put me back in my place. Maybe I’m just feeling bitter after how disastrously everything ended last night—Tor leaving with the queen, and Vaeril disappearing, leaving me to defend myself against his feral friend. Naril had walked me back to my rooms not long after, and I’ve not seen any of them since. Until Eldrin, that is.
After last night, I didn’t think I’d see him for a couple of days while he licked his wounds from the verbal beatdown the queen gave him. Unfortunately, I was wrong. A pounding on my door had announced his arrival, startling me from my breakfast. I suppose I should be grateful that he’d at least waited for me to open the door rather than just barging through it. I can remember how he looked as his eyes tracked up and down my body as I stood in the doorway, my soft, pale blue wrap dress billowing around me from the breeze streaming in through the open window. It was a shocked, unfamiliar, vulnerable expression that crossed his face, and for a second, I wanted to reach out and comfort him. Of course, that didn’t last long. He soon returned to his rude, grouchy self and barked that I’d need to change since we were training today.
That look haunts me still. I can’t seem to get it out of my head, no matter how much I want to murder him right now.
A shadow falls over me, providing a small bit of shade as I try to cool myself down. I know exactly who it’ll be, but I refuse to break my calm for him. He can wait until I can breathe properly again. After all, it’s his fault I feel this way in the first place.
“For someone who spent almost a week on the run, you seem to be pretty awful at it.” He sounds amused at his own joke, or it could be that he’s enjoying seeing me out of breath and in pain. With Eldrin, that wouldn’t surprise me—there’s no love lost between the two of us.
“Har, har,” I reply dryly, and with a sigh, I push up into a standing position, stretching out my sore limbs. Sweat drips down my back, and I’m thankful that my maid, Lillia, managed to find something that would be acceptable for me to work out in.
When I’d asked her why I couldn’t just wear what the male elves were wearing to exercise in, she practically fainted from shock and horror and explained that it just wasn’t done. Loose, stretchy