Page 24 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

I’d forgotten why I rarely stayed when I visited Adriata. This room…I hated it. It was filled with so many things I wanted to forget. One being the sofa by the balcony doors, the one he had usually laid every night I had spent here. I wondered if it still smelled like him.

Just when I laid down, a chill speared down my spine, making me shoot upright again. The room was dark enough to see the shadow under the door seal. Could even imagine him sitting on the ground, his back pressed to my door.

He used to let himself in before, simply barge in and sit on his designated sofa, blabbering and joking away until I gave up to sleep. The memory was a lifetime away, yet it felt so fresh, only as if to taunt me.

“Go away,” I whispered to no one. Not that anyone would have heard it. Not even whatever spirit lingered inside the castle walls.

He remained behind that door for minutes and then hours. Robbing me of sleep and assaulting me with all sorts of resentful feelings I thought I’d long gotten over them.

Night was fully in when I got up and reached the door, pulling it open. It was dark and most of the corridor candles had blown off from the swift autumn wind slipping through windows left open.

He didn’t stir despite the groan of the heavy doors, his head had fallen to an odd angle, his chest rising steady.

He was asleep.

Since when could he fall asleep so easily?

Since he left me?

Two of my guards found that particular moment to march back to my doors.

They froze on the spot and bowed at the both of us. “Apologies, Your Majesty, there was a shift change.”

“She was well guarded,” Malik’s voice boomed over the hallow corridors, and I inwardly winced.

My guards shifted their attention between him and I before bowing again and stepping back to give us the privacy I did not need with him.

“You should—”

“Don’t tell me to go,” he said just as I was about to head back inside.

“I can’t tell you to stay either.”

“But you want me to stay.”

I stopped again, my grip on the door becoming painful. “I don’t want anything, Malik. I’ve learnt to want nothing.”

“You were doing it again.”

“Leave.”

“Why are you doing it again?”

“Why do you care?”

“It had stopped. I swear you had stopped doing it.”

Just when I was about to shut the door on him and return to bed, he faded before me, a hand gripping the door to keep it open.

“You didn’t answer me.”

Glaring at him, I backed away into my room.

He stepped inside and I stepped further away from him. His head tilted to the side, studying me. “Stop moving, Thora.”

“Why?”

“Do you want to turn this into a chase? I can do that. I can tire you until you surrender to me. You wouldn't like it though.”