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It’s not like her. The Davina I’ve come to know would be pushing boundaries, asking questions, finding ways to assert herself even within the constraints of her situation. This silence, this withdrawal—it’s not defiance. It’s something else.

It’s hurt.

The realization catches me off guard. I didn’t expect her to be hurt. I expected her to be angry, maybe, or embarrassed, or even vengeful, but not hurt. Not like this.

***

I finally find her the next evening.

She’s in the library, sitting in a chair near the window with a book open in her lap. She’s not reading it—the pages haven’t turned in the three minutes I’ve been watching from the doorway. She’s just sitting, staring at nothing, her expression blank in a way that makes my jaw tighten.

I step into the room.

She doesn’t look up. It’s as if I’m not there at all.

“Davina. We need to talk.”

“I don’t think we do.”

Her voice is flat. Emotionless. So different from the way she sounded in the study, gasping my name, begging me not to stop.

I move closer, stopping a few feet from her chair. “I understand you may have overheard a conversation between some of my men.”

That gets her attention. She looks up, finally, and her eyes are cold in a way I haven’t seen before.

“I heard them talking about using me. About getting rid of me when I’m no longer useful.” She closes the book and sets it aside. “Is that still the plan?”

“There is no plan.”

“There was one.”

“There was a preliminary assessment, made before I understood the full situation.”

She stands, and for a moment I think she’s going to walk away. Instead, she moves closer to me, close enough that I can see the tension in her shoulders, the tight line of her jaw.

“So what you’re saying is that I should be grateful. You decided not to kill me, so I should feel relieved.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Then what are you saying?” Her voice rises, just slightly. “It looks like you’ve been playing me this whole time. Keeping me close. Making me think—” She stops herself, her jaw clenching. “It doesn’t matter what I thought.”

“What did you think?”

She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “I thought maybe there was something real between us. Something that wasn’t just about leverage or strategy or whatever you want to call it. I was stupid, wasn’t I? You were just doing what you do best—manipulating people into giving you what you want.”

“I wasn’t manipulating you.”

“No? Then what was that night in the study? What was all of that?”

I don’t have an answer. Or rather, I have one, but I don’t know how to say it. I don’t know how to explain that what happened between us wasn’t calculated, wasn’t strategic, wasn’t part of any plan. I don’t know how to tell her that I lost control, that I wanted her so badly I couldn’t think straight, that I’ve been thinking about her ever since.

I’ve never had to explain myself before. I’ve never wanted to.

“I should go,” she says, when I don’t respond. “I’m sure you have more important things to do than stand here.”

“Wait.”

She stops, her hand on the back of the chair. “Why, so you can tell me more about how I’m not going to be killed? So you can explain how lucky I am to be here, to be used, to be—”