I felt the tension in his body melt away, and he pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “Damn right I am.”
We stood there together for what felt like an eternity, and eventually my gaze settled on Knox’s pillow. Even if I’d wanted to fight Benjy on it, he was right, and for more reasons than either of us would say aloud.
At last Benjy let me go, and he studied me for a long moment, his eyes moving from mine to my hair to my mouth, and I wondered what he was thinking. Maybe he was trying to memorize this moment. Or maybe he was trying to reconcile the person I was now with the person we’d both thought I would always be. At last he offered me a small smile. “Come on—Daxton’s expecting me downstairs in a few minutes, but I’ll show you to your room.”
I hesitated. “I thought I’d stay with Greyson. Who’s my brother,” I added, more out of reflex to avoid hurting Benjy’s feelings than anything else.
He chuckled. “Yeah, I’d put that one together, don’t worry. You can sleep wherever you’d like, but they sent some of your things—Lila’s things—here, and I thought you might like to know where they are. Clothes, jewelry, all ofthat.”
I didn’t care about clothes or jewelry, but I nodded anyway, because it was an excuse to spend a few more minutes with him, and I needed confirmation that we really were okay. That he’d meant the things he’d said as much as I did.
He led me down the hall to the next suite over, exactly the way it had been at Somerset, too. “Here,” he said, opening the door for me. “I need to go, but I’ll see you at dinner.”
“Be careful,” I said. The thought of him alone in a room with Daxton and those guards made my blood boil, but if Daxton had wanted to kill him, he would have let the executioner do it. For now, Benjy was as safe as any of us could be, and I had to take comfort in that.
He waved goodbye and disappeared around a corner, leaving me to explore the room. It was decorated in shades of purple and silver, but there was nothing out of the ordinary that stood out. Nothing that looked like it had belonged to Lila.
As soon as I wandered into the bedroom, however, I froze. Sitting on the nightstand, angled toward the bed, was a golden picture frame with a maze design. It was the frame Greyson had given me the night I’d been arrested. I hadn’t seen it since the Battle of Elsewhere.
Sitting down on the edge of the bed, I picked it up and stared at the picture displayed. Greyson and I sat together in the library of Somerset, and we looked relaxed—happy, almost, despite the turmoil at the time. I found the button on the back of the frame easily, and I pressed it long enough for a second, hidden picture to show up—the one of me and Benjy, before I’d been Masked.
Seeing us together, happier than we’d likely ever be again—it made me ache with regret and loneliness. We’d made the right decision today. Clinging to the past wasn’t going to help us get through the future, and while we wouldneed each other now more than ever, it wasn’t in the same way. But it still hurt like hell, and I wasn’t sure it would ever be completely okay.
As I stared at my old face, however, suddenly it shifted again—this time into a photograph I’d never seen before. It was a picture of Hannah and I together in Mercer Manor, talking during a moment I’d long forgotten. Knox musthave taken the picture—Jonathan Mercer sure as hell hadn’t—but however it had gotten there, I was glad it existed.
I examined the picture closely. Hannah hadn’t fully realized I’d been her daughter until after it had been taken, but Knox had managed to capture a moment when we’d looked comfortable together. Not quite mother and daughter, but likely the closest he’d been able to get.
Hannah was still out there somewhere, hidden where Daxton would never be able to get his disgusting hands on her. And suddenly, more than anything in the world, I wanted to find her. I’d lost enough. I wasn’t going to lose my mother, too—not when I’d only just met her.
“She wanted you to have that,” said Benjy from the doorway, and I jumped, nearly dropping it. “I’m sorry—Daxton’s in a meeting with Minister Bradley. Told me to come back later.”
And instead of doing anything else, he’d come back to see me. If I’d had any doubts that we would be okay, they were gone now. “You saw her?”
He nodded. “That’s where Knox sent me. He thought I’d be safer there.”
“But—they caught you.” A bubble of panic formed inside me. “Is Hannah—”