Page 101 of A Bond in Blood

“I would expect nothing less,” Ulrich snapped as I passed him.

When I reached the hook for the cloaks, I refused to hang mine back up. I kept walking, allowing my hate to fuel my descent, until I’d reached the clock room. I turned toward three, running up the stairs with all my might.

When I reached the great hall, I pumped my legs, running not for Ulrich’s bedroom, but the one I’d briefly been given weeks before.

Olen let out a shout behind me, but I kept running until I found the bedroom. I slammed the door open as I rushed to the fire I had somehow known would be waiting for me.

Then I stripped. Ripping my cloak from my body, throwing it and the cover into the flames.

Burning it all to ashes.

Watching it catch flame with my hate.

Olen caught me right as I pulled the dress from my body and threw it into the fire. He yelled out his shock.

“Princess! What the fuck?”

I held up my hand, silencing him.

I watched those flames, with the shimmer of the dress I now realized glistened like starlight catching fire and filling the room with its smoke.

Chapter 22

Ulrich was silent while I sat in the middle of the clock room, meticulously drawing the skylight above and the hallways circling around me.

We’d barely spoken in the days since that ill-fated dinner on the top of the mountain. Our daily meals were silent, the bed quiet and cold each night. Exactly how I preferred it.

His feet shuffled loudly, and I glanced up, finding him watching me.

“Yes?” I asked, rolling my eyes.

“Are you finished?” he replied.

With a sigh, I set my parchment down and held his gaze. “Yourequested that I map these passages. Do you want them to be accurate or rough sketches?”

“Does it have to take so long?”

I admired the room and my hand ran against the stone floor beneath me.

“Your stone has markings,” I said absent-mindedly.

“What?

I pulled my eyes to my hand, drawing the tip of my finger across the marking. A line down, then one at the bottom jutting upwards, with another jutting down. Then at the top of the line, two similar lines as the bottom going opposite directions.

“What does it mean?” I asked, noting the floor covered in the barely visible marking.

Urich stared at my hand drawing against the stone.

“Nothing that concerns you.”

“Why won’t you let me go down that hallway?” I asked, pointing to hallway nine.

Ulrich’s body went rigid, and his hands landed at his side while he blocked the hallway from my view.

“So full of questions today,” he replied.

“And you’re lacking answers.”

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