Chapter 4: Terms

They gave me three rooms at the top of the east tower, and a bathroom with a tub big enough to lie down in.

I stood in the doorway of the bedroom and didn't know how to go in.

Three days, the Regent had said, and one of them was already gone.

I had no idea how to pass a Blood Trial, and nobody had told me what it was.

"You can lock it from the inside," Torin said.

He had followed me up and stopped on the threshold, and he did not cross it.

"There's a guard on the stairs, and I'll be at the end of the hall."

"If you want to leave Greywater tonight, I'll drive you anywhere you name."

"Nobody will stop you."

"Even if I name Cedar Hollow?"

"Even then." His jaw moved. "I'd wait outside the gate."

"You're good at waiting at gates."

He took that without answering, and for a moment I thought I had hurt him.

Then I decided I didn't care.

"Here are my terms," I said. "I'm a guest. I owe your crown nothing, and I can walk out any day I choose."

"Agreed."

"Nobody here tells me what to feel about my father until I've decided."

"Agreed."

"And you stop calling me Your Highness when it's only us."

"In the hall I have to."

"Then in the hall you don't talk to me."

The corner of his mouth moved, and the scar in his eyebrow moved with it.

"I have one term of my own," he said.

"No one touches you here unless you want it, and that includes me."

"I won't take a hand on your arm for granted, however hard the night's been."

I looked at his hands.

They were big, with old scars across the knuckles.

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