Page 40 of The Princess Trap
Another pause, and then she said, “Oh.” That was it.Oh. He couldn’t tell if she was pissed or just surprised. He couldn’t tell if that single syllable meantI see,orScrew you.
So he said, his voice embarrassingly tentative, “Um... Can I come in?”
“Why?”
“Cherry,” he sighed. “Let me come in.”
For a long, long moment, he thought she’d tell him to fuck off. He wouldn’t be surprised. But when she did finally speak, all she said was, “Fine. Come in.”
He froze. Did she really mean that? Had he misheard? Or—
“For fuck’s sake,” she snapped, “hurry up. Before I change my mind.”
For once, Ruben did as he was told.
The room was veiled with inky darkness. As he shut the door behind him, his vision blanked out completely. But he waited, knowing his eyes would find the faintest scrap of light somewhere, if he gave them a chance. He’d spent a lot of time locked in dark rooms as a kid.
Sure enough, the outlines of furniture came into view, so faint and shadowed he wasn’t sure if he really saw them, or somehow sensed them. But those were the kinds of fanciful thoughts he’d taken comfort in as a child—maybe I’m special, maybe I have powers, and one day I’ll use them to make everyone pay.
Now he was an adult, and he knew that his supposed night vision was thanks to cracks in the curtains and underneaththe doors, and pupils wide enough to drink in those drops of light and put them to use.
He moved gingerly through the room, still managing to catch a side table with his hip, but not falling over anything or otherwise disgracing himself. When he reached the foot of Cherry’s bed, he felt a little presumptuous sitting down—but the darkness was too disorientating for him to stand on ceremony.
“Oh, by all means,” she said acidly as he sank onto the mattress. “Make yourself at home.”
“There’s at least four feet of space between us, so don’t have a fit.”
“Why the hell did I tell you to come in?”
Ruben sighed. “I don’t know. I’m insufferable. I apologise.”
He received nothing but silence in reply. He couldn’t quite grasp the quality of that silence. Was she agreeing, or simply surprised by his words, or too tired to bother with conversation? He supposed it didn’t matter.
“Believe it or not,” he said, “I didn’t come here to irritate you.” The words reminded him of conversations with his siblings. He was beginning to think he had issues. He felt the sting of rejection too keenly, and yet, he chased it down.
“So why did you come?” she demanded. Even though she’d been lying in the dark, she didn’t sound tired. But then, as far as he could tell, she spent all day in the library reading books and playing with her cat.
So he just said, “Our meetings aren’t going well.”
“Meetings,” she murmured. “Is that what we’re calling them?”
“I don’t see what else we could call them,” he said reasonably. “Preparation for the Grand Deception?”
She snorted. Which was close to a laugh, right? He’d made her laugh once. Before she’d learned to be wary of him.
Spurred on by that snort—edged in derision though it was—he tried again. “Improving Cherry’s Ruben-Threshold?”
“Something like that,” she admitted. She shifted slightly on the bed, and he felt the motion through the mattress as if they were lying side by side. He’d said there was distance between them, but he had the oddest feeling that if he reached out, his hand would find her ankle, or her calf. He laced his fingers together and put them firmly in his lap.
“I know this is hard,” he said. “And I know you don’t like me, and you don’t trust me. But this will go easier on both of us if we knowsomethingabout each other once we leave this place. And fuck, I wish we didn’t have to, but we do.Ido.”
“And I do too,” she murmured. “I decided to do this. I agreed to it. And I suppose I have been… shirking my obligations. Which isn’t the way I usually behave.”
He chose his words carefully. “I think you could be forgiven for feeling unlike yourself, at the moment.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” she said dryly. “But the world keeps turning, and all that. I think I’ve wallowed long enough. It doesn’t really suit me.”
“If you’ve been wallowing, it was the most graceful and glamorous wallowing I’ve ever seen.”
