“Jules.”
I curse myself for letting my name slip. The hardness I heard a few days ago, when he confronted me near the vault, has faded from his voice. He sounds softer, or . . . tired.
“I wanted to check on you,” he says, and then adds: “Your progress, I mean.”
“How kind,” I mutter. I want to fold in on myself, slump my shoulders and cross my arms over my chest, hide from his too-direct gaze. But I force myself to sit straight, face him head-on. I don’t want to show any weakness.
Liam’s gaze flickers past me, to the heap of mava still behind me, the filled buckets and discarded skins that litter the floor. “I didn’t realize . . . there was this much.” He sounds a little chagrined.
“Perhaps you should stop interfering in things you know nothing about,” I blurt out.
“I could say the same to you,” he shoots back, his eyes suddenly flinty in the dark. Then he blinks. A beat passes, two, and he lets out a breath, visibly tamps down his anger.
He bends down and picks up a whole mava fruit that has rolled from the pile to rest at his feet, then straightens and considers it. “Show me,” he says.
“How to . . . shell the mava?” My voice comes out scathing, incredulous, but he just nods. I can feel myself reddening with frustration, and hope the low light camouflages it. Has he come here to assess my skill?
Furiously, I snatch a fruit from the pile. He approaches, watching with studied interest as I demonstrate the expertise I’ve acquired in the last few hours—find the seam at the top, where the fruit was picked from the bush, and pry it in two with my nails. Liam takes his fruit and mimics my motions, too roughly, and juice flies, spattering his coat. He frowns.
I push out my breath carefully. If I speak more, either my anger will spill over, or I’ll say something revealing, and Liam Gerling already knows too much about me. I take up another handful of mava and set about shelling it, but out of the corner of my eye I can see Liam looking at me. I focus on my work and wait for him to speak.
“About yesterday,” Liam says at length. He sounds uncertain. “My tone was uncalled for. You surprised me.”
This half apology is a shock, but I stay quiet. I know that I was careless, to let Liam catch me following him. Maybe he thinks that if he’s kind to me, I’ll give up my secrets—I’ve seen Ivan play a similar game. If he is playing games, I can too.
“I’m a servant, my lord,” I say, making my voice artificially cheery. “Nothing is uncalled for.”
“Aren’t you afraid?” he asks, his voice measured.
This surprises me. “What do you mean?” For a moment, I forget to make my voice cold.
“I mean—” He pauses, starts over. “Servants are terrified of this. They say the scorpion steals all your time with one sting.” He drops a fruit into a bucket. “But, you know, some people on the far coast eat them. They think if they catch one that’s stung somebody, they’ll gain a lifetime.”
I remember this Liam from childhood, always ready to correct someone with some useless fact he found in one of his books and a harsh word. But what was once merely annoying, he’s now using as a weapon. This time, I let the anger saturate my voice. “You’re the one who assigned me to this, remember?”
“You didn’t answer my question.” Liam closes a fruit in his hand, then opens his palm to show me. “Aren’t you afraid of what may be hiding in here?”
The question settles heavily in the room as his fingers work silently over a fruit. I think of the blood-irons that pass through his hands—hands that are stained as red as wine. Something whispers to me that he’s not just talking about the threat of the scorpion.
I blink. “No,” I say, as evenly as I can. “Are you?”
Liam smiles at me, teeth white in the dimness. “Sometimes I am.”
His words linger around us, stirring something up inside me. What does Liam Gerling have to fear? And more important . . .
“Why are you punishing me?” I want him to admit it—to say it. Liam Gerling gives out information like his family doles out blood-irons: stingily.
“You broke a house rule,” he says. “It could have been worse.” But it’s a lie. I know it is. The Tale of Elisa the Traveler, my favorite childhood book. He remembered it—remembered me. His hatred of me has burned just as brightly all these years as mine has of him—just like Papa said—though I cannot imagine why. To a man of his station, I am nothing. Just another Everless girl.
“Why are you here, Jules?” he asks now, the darkness of his eyes deepening somehow. It unnerves me slightly, the way I can sink into those eyes, like the thick mud in the heart of the forest—quiet, and deep, and easy to get stuck in forever until you starve.
“To earn time.”
“Where is your father? Peter, wasn’t it?”
Instantaneously, I’m on my feet, clenching my fists, mava spilling off my lap onto the floor. “You know his name too, you bastard,” I hiss. I know he’s toying with me—baiting me like an animal—but it doesn’t matter, though a voice inside my head is screaming at me to care. To stop. “You’ve never forgotten either of us. Never let us live down the accident, which was—” Your fault, I want to say, but swallow down the words, suddenly fearful again. “Why don’t you go find somewhere else to be cruel?”
“Careful,” Liam says mildly. “This is my home.”
“It was mine too. Before you sent us away.” I know now that he remembers this, and the accident in the forge. I know it with more certainty than I’ve known anything else since coming to the Gerling estate, even if he won’t admit it.
But does he know that my father is dead?
“Jules, listen,” he begins.
“No. Just leave me alone, Liam, please.” My composure is slipping as I think about Papa, about how much I need him and wish he were here with me still. Angry tears prick my eyes. “Why do you hate me so much?”
Liam doesn’t answer. He draws in a breath, but before either of us can speak, another set of approaching footsteps echoes down the hall.
I turn away from Liam, press the back of my hand against my eyes until the threat of tears recedes. Liam spins to face the door.
Roan stands there. His eyes widen when he sees his older brother. “Liam?” Then his gaze cuts past Liam, to me. “Jules? I’ve been asking after you. What . . . what’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Liam says, a hairbreadth too late. Even speaking to his own brother, his voice is cold and remote. “The Queen’s guards required more mava dye for their weapons. So I assigned someone to shell it.”
“Mava?” Roan repeats in disbelief. “And you’ve shut a poor servant down here in the dark to shell it, rather than having the paste imported like a reasonable person?”
Affection rushes through me, though with a sliver of disappointment at hearing him call me a servant—not Jules.