The guard moved to the massive doorway and unlocked a complicated mechanism that the darkness made it difficult for her to make out well. The heavy slab door opened into another corridor, and magic swelled from within, beckoning her.
She resisted the urge to back away. Certain Warrick had noticed the flinch, even from behind her, she walked forward without glancing back. She felt him following, but he stuck to the shadows, letting her stride toward another foolish thing at her own pace.
There were no other doors and no hidden chambers or additional passageways, only a large archway carved into the stone, latticed with heavy iron bars. Beyond it, in the darkness, Nim felt something wicked from a shadowy shape.
“My lady.” Calum’s voice was silky, unconcerned, as if he’d not been trapped in a cell.
Light flared as several torches came to life behind him, and she flinched, but apparently, he’d seen well enough to recognize her in the dark.
Calum leaned casually against the back wall of his cell in the same clothes he had been wearing when he was captured. He was nothing like how she’d imagined him, not cowed in the least. And yet, it had only been days, no matter that her world had since been turned upside down. Maybe after a few months, or a year, he would begin to show the wear a dark part of her needed to see.
Calum’s lips tipped up at the edges in a nasty smile. “Did you miss me?”
His whisper tickled unpleasantly over her skin, and her fingers tightened on the candlestick waiting in her best fighting hand. She did not answer, not sure what she had been so eager to say. The point was only to see him, she supposed, to know that he was there and that she was safe.
But Calum straightened to saunter toward her, and she felt nothing of the sort. He came to a stop before the bars, not touching the metal but hovering excruciatingly near. He had asked if she’d missed him, but the intimations he sent her said how much he had thought of seeing her and what he had imagined doing to her the moment he was free. Because he would get free, those imaginings seemed to promise, and so, so soon.
Nim gritted her teeth. Calum laughed. “I know why you are here, my lady.” His dark gaze roamed the darkness beyond her then returned with no mention of the magic Nim had felt or the personal items that had been tampered with in her rooms. “But how could I do such a thing, when you bound me yourself?” He held up his wrists, unbound as they were, and purred, “Here I am, at your mercy.” His tone was sickly sweet, and though his words vowed that he was bound, the pleasure that twisted his lips said something else entirely.
Her stomach swam. He meant whatever dark secret that danced around the edges of his intimations. Calum knew he would be free and would come for her, just as he said.
Nim stumbled back, but Warrick moved out of the darkness, a silent threat radiating from him as he stopped at Nimona’s side then slipped a warm hand over the small of her back to steady her.
Calum’s gaze slid over them both, mischief glittering in eyes as dark as onyx. An intimation rose again, one that promised that Warrick would have to watch whatever was done to the lady Nimona.
Warrick’s jaw went tight, but Calum's smirk seemed only to beg his brother to harm him, to break the terms of their agreement so that Calum could be free.
Beside Nim, Warrick’s response was spoken softly but menacingly. “I wouldn’t dream of touching you.” He handed Nim a short dagger, the threat in his gesture clear. He wouldn’t have to touch Calum himself, not when anyone else could torture him at their will.
A strange sensation swelled through Nim as her fingers closed tighter around the dagger. She didn’t recall the candlestick being torn from her grip, but it was gone, replaced with a weapon that was warm and tingling with magic. It was well made, very much the size and weight of the one she’d carried for years, but a bit more solid, its handle carved with delicate scrollwork reminiscent of vines, the material far finer than any she’d ever held. It was woven with Warrick’s magic, but she wasn’t certain exactly what that might buy her.
She stared up at him, a question in her gaze. Voice low, he only murmured, “A wedding present.”
Something dark swelled from Calum, its bite sharp and deep, but when Nim’s gaze shot to him, whatever rage he’d let slip was suddenly tied within him, hidden from her entirely.
Nim wondered if he’d been able to keep it out of her reach even when he’d been so brutally angry all along. Her memory of the small room deep within the undercity rose unbidden, with Calum holding her down, whispering cruel promises into her ear.
Her grip tightened around the dagger. Calum truly had hated her, maybe as much as she’d come to hate him. She understood suddenly—from the beginning, he’d known what her contract entailed and that no matter what he wanted, the head of the Trust had tied Nimona Weston to Inara’s fate and to Warrick, because the queen intended to use him, and to gain Inara—but not for Calum. He had not gone after only Nim. He had gone for the others, Wesley had said, everyone who had been tied to bargains by the king’s men in their desire to save the kingdom.
It was not just her and not just once. Calum had been calculating, stacking the odds in his favor. He was playing a bigger game than petty revenge.
Calum was heir to the Trust, but by the grace of the fates, he was bound by Nim’s terms. Even so, she could feel the remembered magic pressing against her in the darkness not so long ago, the torture of his intimations as he leaned near.
“I own you,” he’d whispered against her ear.
Nim would not give into the darkness that wanted to say it back to him, even as he was trapped within magical bonds and behind iron bars. She would not stab him. The best punishment would be to let him live, to force him to endure. Calum couldn’t read her mind, but she let him see it in her smile. He would never own anyone again.
Warrick was silent as they left the cell. He said nothing at all and sent no intimations on the long walk back to his rooms. Once they stood in the center of his study, Nim turned to face him, desperate for some reason she could not quite pin down. “I needed to see him. To see for myself that he was there.” Bound, trapped, no longer a threat but real and solid in his cell.
Warrick leaned back against his desk, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “Why?”
Nim searched his face. His expression was calm even as something roiled beneath. He clearly didn’t question her motivations to see Calum but wondered why she hadn’t come to him instead. Nim had known something was wrong. Warrick had felt it, the same as she had. Like a fool, she’d run straight to Calum to play into his hands. Had it been a trap, she would have fallen for it.
And all she had to do was come to Warrick’s rooms.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “The safest place for you is at my side.”
Truth. The same as everything Warrick said to her, and not simply because of his vow. He wanted her safe, protected. Nim was the one constantly throwing herself into the path of danger.
She frowned, pressing down the apology that started to bubble up. She owed no apologies. And even if she had, it was not what he wanted. He wanted… something else. She could feel it.
His gaze raked over her as if checking to be certain she was unharmed. He hadn’t liked seeing her so close to Calum and clearly hadn’t liked that she’d planned to confront him alone. Her fingers played nervously on the hilt of the dagger. She moved closer, stopping just out of reach of him.