Page 227 of Onyx Cage: Volume II
She only shook her head, informing Taras she didn’t need anything before once again closing the door. He leaned against the wall, offering out a flask that I was more than happy to partake in.
Then he left to make the same rounds of the estate I had made several hours ago, coming back to report intermittently.
He had just taken off again when the door finally opened, wan shafts of morning light spilling into the hallway from the crack in the door. Mila’s head appeared in the gap, her lips tilted up into a small smile.
“Since you insist on standing out here, you may as well make yourself useful and send for a bath and breakfast.”
I doubted seriously that Mila would order those things for herself to Rowan’s room, which meant…
“She’s awake?” My feet pulled me toward the doorway on instinct. “Is she all right?”
“Yes and yes.” Mila actually shooed me backward with her hand. “But in need of a bath and breakfast, as I said.”
She closed the door quickly, but not before I saw a flash of crimson in the middle of an onyx bed. She was sitting up, awake, and she wanted food.
Admittedly, she was still refusing to acknowledge my presence, but still, it was enough for me to feel like I could breathe again.
CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT
After I sent a man for Taisiya, I sent another messenger for Taras, telling him to schedule the council meeting for after breakfast and to send Yuriy to guard Rowan’s rooms.
Then I risked returning to my own rooms long enough to ready myself for the day, now that I knew she was awake. I wasn’t concerned about the possibility of missing her when it took roughly thirty-seven hours to dry her endless mass of hair.
Let alone to scrub the blood from it.
I blinked away the memories of Taisiya painstakingly cleaning each strand of Rowan’s curls after the flogging.
At least this time, the blood belonged to someone else.
I dismissed Yuriy when I emerged into the hallway, freshly shaven and dressed in clean clothes. True to my expectations, it was another couple of hours before her door opened once more.
I almost stopped breathing when she finally stepped into the hallway.
My gaze roamed over her face, from the guarded set of her eyes to the slight bow in her lips that I had missed more than I could stand to think about.
Yesterday, she had looked ethereal and deadly, wearing armor and spattered in blood.
But today, she just looked like...herself. Gorgeous and perfect andmine.
I flinched, realizing that the last part was far more tenuous than I wanted to admit.
She surveyed me in turn, her gaze lingering on each of my features with a longing that was entirely at odds with the way her hand clenched into an angry fist. Energy thrummed in the several feet of space between her body and mine, pulsating with the weight of all the contradictory feelings neither of us wanted to express.
Like that I wanted her with every part of my soul, but I would not cave to her fury with an apology we both knew to be a lie.
My lips parted to confirm that she was uninjured when she cut me off.
“I need to see to my men,” she said flatly.
There was no anger in her voice, none of the fire that usually punctuated everything she said and did, only an icy detachment. Her shoulders were tense, poised for a battle I had no desire to fight with her just now.
Instead, I nodded once. “I’ll escort you to them.”
Her posture relaxed slightly at my words, and she gestured for me to lead the way. I kept a pace that allowed us to keep in step with each other, trying and failing to not breathe in the intoxicating scent of amber and citrus that filled the air around her.
“Your men have been fed and the wounded tended to,” I began, giving her an update, both because I knew she would want one, and to interrupt the direction my thoughts were taking.
Her head snapped up in surprise, her riotous curls bouncing with the movement. She studied my face, her own expression impossible to read.