Page 70 of The Lord of Whispers

I turned on Jay.

“What the fuck, Jay?”

I was angry with him, but I was angrier at myself that I’d let myself get into such a vulnerable position without even realizing it.

Jay rose in his chair. “Alarie, don’t—” he started, adopting his high-lord veneer.

“No. You don’t, Jay,” I interrupted.

I’d never spoken to him that way before. Not even when I’d found him with Lady Vitruvian. But I felt violated, like my best friend had been turned against me as a spy.

“Alarie, youwilllower your voice,” the high lord ordered.

He had never taken that tone with me before. Although he did not raise his voice, the power in his words, his power, seemed to fill the crevice of every corner in the room,compellingme to obey. Even in the beginning, when he had been my forbidding tutor, I’d felt an innate kindness within him. But as he stood addressing me in his study, that underlying warmth was gone. I stood there, stunned.

And then another thought came to me, about his powers, about him controlling the whispers at the High Court and “keeping me safe,” while he was away so many nights.

“Jay, do you… Do youlistento the things I say, to what people say to me?” I asked.

I now looked at him, wondering where the man I loved ended and the Lord of Whispers started or if there could, in fact, be any daylight found between the two.

“Alarie, how else do you expect me to keep you safe when I can’t be around you? When I have to be away from the High Court so often?” he said, the muscles in his jaw clenched.

I felt a chill shoot down my arms and then my spine. He had beenspyingon me.

“Alarie, you know about Ala—You know what I lost when I wasn’t able to be there before. I won’t,I can’t, ever let that happen again.”

I softened, just a bit, at the long lifetime of pain and guilt he had put himself through for things that were not his fault. But the sympathy in my eyes seemed to strike a nerve with the high lord.

“I have other emissaries outside the door waiting to make their reports. We’ll talk about this later,” he said coldly, dismissing me.

He had always encouraged me to speak my mind and challenge him as long as I didn’t do it in front of others. That was part of our deal—I gave him “Yes, Jays” in the bedroom but maintained control of my life outside of the bedroom. Or, at least, that was what I’d thought was our deal.

He had never tried to overtly tell me what to do outside of the bedroom. He was ruining the delicate balance of our relationship by pulling the high-lord card on me like this. I raised my eyebrows in disbelief before turning to the door, calming my face so that the other emissaries waiting in the hall would not notice anything unusual, and left without another word.

I caught up to Luke walking toward House Bellamy.

“Luke,” I called out to him. “Luke.”

Luke stopped, waiting for me to catch up. He hadn’t gone very far. He’d probably been waiting on me, knowing Jay well enough to know that my conversation with the high lord was not going to go over well or take very long.

“Al,” he said, his lips pressed into a sideways smirk.

“Luke…” And before I could stop myself, I blurted, “Have you just been pretending to be my friend?” I was questioning something I’d never thought to question before. “Am I just one more piece on the game board that is the High Court for you and Jay to play with and I didn’t realize it?”

I looked down, unable to meet his eyes, scared of what his answer would be.

Luke grabbed my chin, gently tilting my face up to him.

“Al, how can you even ask me that?” he replied fiercely. “I did what Jay asked because I thought that was whatyouwanted—I thoughtyouwanted to be with him. I thought you wanted to keep things quiet between you two.”

“I did. I mean,I do. But I guess I just didn’t realize you and I were just pretending,” I said.

“I wasn’t pretending, Al. Not in the way you are thinking. When I’m with you—” He stopped himself. “Well, Al, what did you think we were doing?” he asked me.

I looked down at my hands hidden between his big hands.

“I—”

---