She could feel his watchful gaze on her as she ate in near silence. He hadn’t interrupted her yet, but she could see that he wanted to. For the first time in a very long while she felt she might have the upper hand. A very slight upper hand, to be sure, but he seemed nearly as confused and put off by the entire situation as she was. Which was, in her estimation, why he was being so watchful. And why he was letting her eat undisturbed. He was circling her, as though she were a potentially dangerous creature and he was concerned about being bitten.
The thought sent a pleasurable rush of power through her, joining the sated sensation in the pit of her stomach brought about by the cheese. Her needs had always been simple. At least, they had become simple once she was sent to live with the nomads at just six years old. They had been simple by necessity. But lately, her needs had shrunk down even further. Warmth, food, shelter. If she had those things, she knew she could keep on going.
Good food and soft blankets were several notches more extravagant than she’d had in the past couple of months. And a bit of power? Very heady icing on top of this unexpected cake.
So she continued to eat in silence, sensing his growing impatience, allowing it to feed her small, mean satisfaction.
“How long has it been since you were fed?”
His question surprised her. “Since this morning.”
“You are too skinny,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact. His words offended her, and she couldn’t quite figure out why. She had never given much thought to her appearance. The men who had taken her captive had assigned a woman to make her beautiful for presentation to the king, but Zara couldn’t say it had mattered much to her. They had put too much makeup on her, the gold around her eyes her own addition, a nod to the culture she had adopted as her own. Her beauty had never been a topic of discussion among the nomads. She had been under the protection of the leader, Raz, and he had forbidden any man from touching her, or even looking at her in a disrespectful manner.
And now this man was telling her she was too skinny. And she was angry.
“I will say that my captors did not overly concern themselves with the quality of my food.”
“You are a captive?” he asked, his tone fierce.
“I’m surprised you care. Your brother did not appear to be similarly concerned. He was quick to accept me as though I were a...a fruit basket.”
He looked her over. “You are most certainly not a fruit basket, that much is evident.”
“I have been passed around like one.” She sniffed, allowing herself a moment to fully revel in the indignity of it all. At one time, she had been a princess. A member of the royal family in Tirimia. Being in a palace such as this would have been her right. Before she had been wrenched away from the only home she’d ever known, robbed of her family. Her birthright. “I suppose I can only be grateful no one has plucked at any of my grapes and taken small samples, so to speak.”
She looked up and caught his dark gaze, the sharp shock of heat piercing her straight to her stomach. She felt her face warm and she looked away. “Indeed, that would have been a shame. I’m glad your grapes remain...unsampled.”
A muscle beneath her eye twitched. “Remarkable under the circumstances, I should think.” She had spent a great many years being protected, but that did not mean she was ignorant of the ways of men.
“You were the princess in Tirimia,” he said, his tone vaguely accusatory.
“I am the princess. I have been replaced. Not by another princess, but by a farcical government who pretends to care about the freedom of the people, when, in truth, they only care about their own power.”
“I thought the entire royal family was killed during the revolution.”
Her insides grew cold. That always happened when she thought of her parents. Of her older brother. Her memories of them were soft around the edges now, worn like old, weathered photographs. But what remained, as sharp and terrible as ever, was the coldness she’d felt when she learned of their fates.
It hadn’t been sadness in its simplest form. It had been death itself. A chill that had stolen through her, replaced all of her blood with ice. It had taken months to thaw. Months for her to feel anything at all again beyond the frost that had taken up residence in her chest.