Page 81 of A Throne of Blood and Ice

Yet Nox’s room is practically bare.

There’s a bed in the corner, one hardly long enough for his lanky form. The scarlet sheets are made, but lazily so. They look like they’d be scratchy. There’s also a desk pushed up against the wall, though it appears more well-used than the bed. There are indentions in the wood where Nox must have borne down too hard while writing. The seat on the desk chair is worn as well.

Still. It’s just grimoires, all related to the work Nox does for the queen.

There’s a dresser across from the bed on the wall adjacent to the door, but nothing sits atop it.

There’s not even anything tucked under the bed, at least not that I can see.

“What?” Nox asks over his shoulder as he reaches into the trunk at the foot of the bed and pulls out a quilt.

“Nothing. It’s just…where’s all your stuff?”

Nox frowns, folding the blanket over his arm. “My stuff?”

“Yes. The items you have amassed in your possession over the course of your lifetime.”

Nox gives an amused huff and shuts the trunk. “Maybe I’m just not the material sort.”

My mind flashes to the room I shared with Imogen, to the piles of useless crap I stuffed under my bed until it ran out from underneath in streams.

Most of the stuff was valueless, but each trinket held a memory.

I wonder then if Nox has any memories he’d like to hold on to. Any at all.

“My stuff is with my family,” Nox says, shrugging. “I haven’t exactly acquired anything here that’ll be worth taking with me. Besides, if I need anything, Gunter is right across the hall. He hoards enough possessions for the both of us.”

It occurs to me that for the past twelve years, Nox has treated the castle like an inn. As if he’d only be here for a temporary stay. I suppose twelve years is but a blink in a fae lifespan, but when Nox talks about his time here, it’s as if he feels he’s been trapped for eternity.

Still. It’s like he holds onto the hope that he’ll be leaving any day now.

There’s something about it that breaks me.

We leave his room quickly enough, though the image of it feels burned into my mind.

I try to imagine a little Nox curled up in that room, and it’s then that it truly hits me. How young he was when he was taken.

How young I was when I was taken, too.

My heart gives a little lurch, and as we sneak through the dark corridors, his hand in mine so he can lead me in the dark, I can’t help but give his hand a little squeeze.

When we reach my little dungeon and he fidgets with the key before letting me inside, I glimpse a shimmer of pain in his eyes.

He slips his hand from mine and begins arranging the blankets upon the dais, taking care to fold them into a pillow at the head of the slab.

Something pricks in my chest.

“Hopefully that’ll be a little more comfortable,” he says, patting the sheets down as if they were a mattress in need of fluffing and not a stone slab underneath a thin sheet of blankets.

The gesture is still sweet, though.

Then he turns to go, and before I can open my mouth to thank him, he’s at the dungeon door.

The key doesn’t rattle.

When I turn to face him, he’s holding the key to the lock, but he doesn’t turn it.

“I hate locking you in here,” he explains.

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