Page 136 of Enchanted Kingdom
I took a deep breath as Krew walked us down a hallway. “You did well tonight,” he complimented. “Very well.”
I couldn’t take it. His kindness after saving me back there. The way I had struggled all night, trying to rise above it all, just to come crashing down when I spotted Keir and Gwen. It had been a lot. I sniffed hard and wrapped my arms around myself. “Can I go upstairs now?”
Krew was moving, taking off his jacket. “Yes. You’re done for the night, Jorah.”
I let out a deep breath and couldn’t help the few tears that slipped out. “Wait,” I gasped. “Does your dismissing me matter? Doesn’t it have to be Keir?”
He shook his head as he wrapped his jacket around me. “No. It just matters that you get dismissed.”
“Oh.” I sniffed again, trying to keep the tears away while I slipped my arms into his warm jacket. “So I’m not switching harems or anything like that?”
His lips twitched. “Do you want to be?”
“No?” Though his jacket did smell really good.
He reached in and gently brushed one of my tears away. “Is that a question?”
“No?” I answered exactly the same. His gray eyes were really distracting.
“Well, you are free to go back to your room,” Krew said with a smile.
I took a shaky breath. “Thank you.”
He let out a sigh before turning to go back into the ballroom. Just before he had his back to me, I noticed his magic flare in his eyes. “It was the very least I could do.”
Owen stepped in from where he’d been lurking as soon as Krew strode away. “Did you know?” I croaked.
“About Gwen?” he asked gently.
I nodded as the tears again began flowing.
He shook his head. “No. I didn’t. Despite what you may think, with a room that packed, I really do watch just you at these things. I don’t keep track of when Keir slips away and for how long.”
I wanted to throw up. “Okay.”
“Can you walk?” he asked.
I managed a shrug in Krew’s huge jacket. “I don’t know.”
He glanced around the hallway and then led me in a direction I had never been before.
“Where are we going?” I managed to ask as more tears streamed down my face.
“We are taking a faster route,” he offered.
Two hallways later, he hit a button in the wall.
“What are we doing right now?” I asked.
He smirked. “Taking the elevator. So I don’t have to carry you up four flights of stairs.”
“There’s an elevator?” For some reason that made me cry even harder. I had been here for almost a month, taking stair after stair every single day, and there had been an elevator the entire time?
Of course there had to have been. The king wouldn’t walk stairs. But naturally the elevator would have been off-limits to the rest of us.
This elevator was not like the pulley systems I had seen by the wall in Nerede; it was fancier and electric. I would have been in total awe of it had I not been numb from the evening. I couldn’t stop crying.
Owen had a hand on my back guiding me and every so often reminding me to breathe.
