Page 32 of Dawn of Hope

“Are you going to disappear again, or will I see you soon?” I wince at my forwardness, but his grin is reassuring.

“Why Addy? Did you miss me?” His eyes sparkle with the playfulness of his tone.

I almost correct him calling me the wrong name, forgetting for a second that I’m not Lennox, at least not to him. It has been so easy to just be myself this entire evening, and immediately the idea sours with the thought that he has been nothing but forthcoming and I have been lying to him.

He was right earlier. He can’t trust me.

I pretend like I am thinking hard for a moment. “Yes. But I’d be careful if I were you. You said yourself you didn’t know if I was being honest with you.”

He clutches his chest and pretends to stumble backward. “You wound me. You can’t blame me for being cautious.”

I laugh. “No, I cannot. I would do the same.” I definitely will not admit I already had.

“Then I will see you soon, Addy.” He steps forward quickly, his hand finding mine, and raises it to his lips. He brushes them over my knuckles, his eyes never leaving mine. He releases me and I back away. I tug my hood down again and watch my feet as I walk.

I can’t help the smile pulling at my lips and the feeling that despite heading back to my cage, I’m not ready to give up my coveted freedom yet again. Especially not when I finally have a friend.

“What thefuck, Lennox.”

I gasp and turn toward the darkness that envelops my chambers, instinctively reaching toward my lower back, where my training dagger usually sits.

My hand comes up empty. I don’t have a weapon of my own yet, not until my ceremony, but I instantly realize how quickly I’ve come to rely on it.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Brynne hisses at me as she stomps across my room, coming at me like she does in the ring. She snatches my arm out of the air, pulling it up to look at it.

“And you weren’t armed? Have I taught you nothing?” Her voice is harsh, yelling but in a scary, hushed way, trying to keep from being heard. She looks at my clothes and I watch as fury takes over her face. “You better start speaking, and it better be a good answer.”

“I’m pretty sure nothing I say will be a suitable answer for you, Brynne.” I pull my arm out of her grasp and slip by, unclasping my cloak and throwing it down on the chair in front of the fire. The pillows are crumpled, and remnants of my dinner are scattered across the table. She has been waiting here for quite a while.

“Where. Were. You,” she grinds out.

“In the city.” I don’t let my voice waver at all. I kick off my boots and walk to the closet, beginning to unbutton the dress I need to stow away in the laundry.

“You’re joking.”

I glance over my shoulder and meet her eyes. “No, Brynne, I’m not joking.”

“What the hell could you possibly be doing in the city?”

“It doesn’t matter what I was doing.”

“Like hell it doesn’t.”

I pull a robe from the closet and drape it over my shoulders, cinching it at my waist. “All that matters is that I’m back, and I’m fine.” I am not about to tell her my plan. No one can know. I don’t need the sympathy or the help. This is something I need to do, and only I can do it.

She takes a few aggressive steps toward me, her voice raising slightly more than it was before. “Do you realize I almost had the entire guard out looking for you? If you had come back any later, I would have torn the city apart.”

“I’m here, and I’m fine. You do realize that my father used to spend every day in the city, right? I don’t know why you are so upset that I went out for one night.”

“Because your father was guarded! He was never alone! You clearly don’t have the same sense he did because you went by yourself!”

I roll my eyes at her and sit at the stool of my vanity. “No one knows who I am, Brynne. It’s basically like being protected. I’m invisible.” I pull my hair out of the braids, the golden strands peeking through the surface of the ones I still color dark.

Brynne eyes my hair with a scowl. “Was this the first time?”

I look at her in the mirror, still working my braids free. She tilts her head, waiting for me to answer.

I could refuse to say, and she would know it wasn’t the first time, but I don’t want to just cower to the crown and its rules and expectations. Not anymore. Not after I have discovered an entire world outside of these walls that I easily could have been experiencing. My blind following and fear of the rules and expectations my father placed on me has kept me from living, and I won’t do it anymore. I am going to own my actions.