Chapter 5 Xalric's Terms

Lirael's POV

I didn't sleep.

I told myself it was because the bed was too soft, which was a lie. The bed was the most comfortable thing I had ever been horizontal on in my twenty two years of life, but every time I closed my eyes I saw the guard's head and heard the crowd cheering and felt the four locks turning one after the other, so I gave up somewhere around the third hour and decided to do something useful instead.

I mapped the room.

It was what I did in unfamiliar terrain. Before any hunt, before moving through new forest, I mapped. Exits, sight lines, what stood between me and where I needed to go. It was the habit that had kept me alive in the Under District for years and it was the only thing I had right now.

The chamber was insanely large. Large enough that my entire house, Seraphina's workroom included, would have fit inside it with room left over for an argument. I walked the perimeter, checking for anything that wasn't decorative. Two windows facing the city, both sealed with wards humming beneath the glass when I touched them. The main door with the four locks I already knew about. A second door leading only to a bathing chamber.

One door. Four locks. Two sealed windows.

I went to the main door and opened it.

It opened.

I stood there for a moment, surprised, before stepping into the corridor. The hall was dimly lit with floating soul orbs drifting near the ceiling and almost completely empty. A maid moved away from me carrying linens. Another crossed a distant junction. No guards at my door. No one watching me.

I leaned against the doorway and thought about it.

He hadn't locked me in anymore. He had locked me in last night, all four turns, and now the path beyond my room sat open and visible. I wasn't naive enough to think it was an oversight. He had let me walk out this morning the same way he had given me five minutes to run last night.

He wanted to see what I would do.

I went back inside and sat on the bed.

If I ran and he caught me again, which he would, I would lose whatever small amount of ground I had. If I stayed and behaved, I kept my options open. Eventually I would find the thing he hadn't accounted for because everyone had one. Even gods.

I was still sitting there when a guard knocked and pushed the door open without waiting for an answer.

"Lord Xalric requests your presence at breakfast," he said, in the tone of someone delivering a command while using the word requests.

I looked at him. "And if I'm not hungry?"

He stared back at me with the expression of a man who had not been given a response for that possibility.

I got up and followed him.

The dining room was large enough to host a small army and set for two, which felt deliberate. Xalric sat at the head of the table, dressed in dark clothing instead of armor, though he looked no less dangerous without it. His wings were folded behind him, his hair loose over his shoulders, and he was reading something when I entered.

I chose the chair farthest from him and sat.

A maid entered quietly and began placing dishes on the table. She introduced herself as Dela in a soft voice as she set a covered plate near me. I barely registered it because Xalric had finally looked up.

"Did you sleep?" he asked.

"Wonderfully," I said.

His expression didn't change, but I could tell he knew I was lying.

"I'll make this simple," he said. "Your sister killed my brother. By law that makes her and every member of your family traitors to Ebonveil, subject to branding and exile at minimum. At maximum..." His gaze settled on me. "You saw what I did to a guard for touching you. Imagine what I do to traitors."

My hands stayed flat against the table.

"However," he continued calmly, "I am a ruler before I am anything else, and rulers do not waste resources. You are here. You are able bodied. You will serve in this household as my personal maid, attending to whatever I require, and in exchange your family keeps their lives, their name, and their freedom. The moment you stop being useful to me, that arrangement ends."

I stared at him. "You want me to be your maid."

"I want you to be useful," he said. "Maid is simply the closest word for it."

"I'm a hunter. I track game, I don't pour tea."

“Trust me, those are not the services I need from you." His voice dropped even lower and I swallowed hard.

"And if I say no?"

He regarded me with perfect patience. "Then your family pays for what your sister did. Your choice, Lirael. Make it now or after breakfast. It will be made today."

I pushed back on every point.

I asked why he needed a personal maid when he already had an entire household of them. He said he didn't.

I asked what attending to him actually meant because I wanted it defined clearly before I agreed to anything. He explained it without hesitation. His chambers, his meals, his correspondence, being available when called.

I asked what happened if he called and I didn't come.

He smiled the same way he had smiled in the doorway last night.

I withdrew the question.

"Why me specifically?" I demanded. "I'm powerless, untrained, and I've already told you I'll hate you every day."

He lifted his cup. "Because you interest me."

"That's not a reason."

"It's the only one I'm offering."

I sat back and looked down at the table.

Seraphina was apparently dead. He had delivered that information with the same flat tone he used for everything else, and the grief sat inside my chest like something dangerous, something I couldn't afford to touch yet. I thought about my mother and my aunts and the rest of the Vaelryns scattered through the Under District, guilty only by blood.

I looked back at him.

"Fine," I said quietly. "I'll stay."

He nodded once, like this had always been the outcome he expected, and returned to what he had been reading.

I stared at the untouched food in front of me. Eating his food felt like accepting something I wasn't ready to accept.

I lasted four minutes.

Without looking up from the page, Xalric slid a plate toward me.

I froze.

The plate held exactly what I would have chosen for myself.

I stared at him. He simply turned another page.

I began eating. And I hated myself for every bite, but I hadn't eaten since the forest and my body cared far less about pride than I did. When I finished, I folded my hands in my lap and sat up straight like I hadn't devoured everything embarrassingly fast.

Xalric didn't say a word about it.

Which was somehow the most unsettling thing he had done since I arrived.