The next day,

Author

The room was small. A servant's quarters somewhere in the palace complex. She didn't know how she'd gotten there.

One moment she was in the garden, walking away. The next, his hand was in hers and he was leading her through corridors she didn't recognize, past guards who didn't stop him, into a space that smelled of him.

She should have left then. She should have killed him in his sleep. She should have done a hundred things that weren't what she actually did, which was let him pull her down onto a narrow bed and wrap his arms around her and fall asleep with his...