Chapter 64
Sebastian
Then I heard footsteps, light and quick, and I sat up straighter, pulse quickening. She descended the stairs, movements graceful, and I felt satisfaction surge.
But instead of coming toward me, she turned at the bottom and walked straight to the kitchen, disappearing through the sliding door without a glance. The door clicked shut, soundproofing cutting off any noise, and I sat there in stunned silence, hands clenched into fists.
"She's been in the kitchen for hours every day, sir," a maid said helpfully, gesturing to a well-worn copy of Classic French Pastries on the coffee table, pages dog-eared and marked with sticky notes. "She's very dedicated."
I picked up the book, flipping through recipes she'd marked—blueberry cheesecake tarts, crème brûlée, chocolate éclairs—and felt my anger ebb slightly. She was putting in real effort. Maybe she was finally coming around.
I settled back, eyes still fixed on the kitchen door, and waited.
Twenty minutes later, the door slid open and she emerged carrying a silver tray laden with desserts. The scent hit me first—rich, buttery pastry, sweet blueberries, caramelized sugar. She set the tray down on the dining table: blueberry cheesecake tarts with perfectly golden crusts, crème brûlée with glassy caramelized tops, delicate chocolate éclairs dusted with powdered sugar.
And then, without a word, without even a glance in my direction, she sat down, pulled out her iPad, and began eating, attention focused entirely on her screen, as if I didn't exist.
I stared at her, disbelief warring with rising fury. This calculated indifference was worse than any insult. She'd spent ten days learning to bake, had poured hours into creating these perfect desserts, and now she was eating them herself, ignoring me completely.
One of the maids hugged herself, teeth chattering, breath coming out in white puffs.
"Sir," she ventured carefully, "should I check if the kitchen has additional ingredients? In case Miss Lirael requires—"
"I'll handle it myself," Lirael's voice cut in from behind me, flat and dismissive, like she was talking to furniture rather than people. I didn't turn around, refused to give her the satisfaction of seeing how that tone affected me, but I felt her presence like a physical weight pressing against my spine. The maid practically fled toward the kitchen, and I stood there gripping the remote hard enough to leave white marks across my knuckles.
The oven timer dinged—cheerful, absurd—and I heard her footsteps crossing the hardwood. She emerged carrying a black ceramic bowl, the expensive minimalist kind that cost more than most people made in a month. Inside: precisely cut pieces of raw meat, dark red and glistening, sprinkled with herbs that filled the air with a sharp, medicinal scent. She moved with that same graceful efficiency she'd displayed all week, as if this were her own home rather than the house where she was technically my prisoner, technically mine.
The maids had already set out place settings on the coffee table in front of me—I'd been cycling through channels mindlessly for over an hour, had pressed the same button so many times the remote now had a hairline crack along the side. Seeing those carefully arranged plates and silverware had sent a pathetic surge of hope through me that she would finally, finally acknowledge my existence, bring me something she'd made with her own hands.
"I'm not going to eat—" I started, voice coming out harder than I'd intended, cold enough to make the remaining maid flinch.
But Lirael simply walked past. Her white sundress swished softly, close enough that I could have reached out and grabbed her if I'd wanted to, and then she was gone, heading straight for the sliding doors that led to the back garden. She didn't pause, didn't hesitate, didn't even turn her head to acknowledge I'd spoken. The soft click of the door closing behind her landed like a slap across my face.
The silence that followed was absolute, crushing, the kind that made your ears ring and your blood pressure spike. I sat perfectly still, jaw clenched so tight I could feel my teeth grinding together, while around me the household staff collectively held their breath, waiting to see if I would explode or simply freeze them all to death with the force of my fury. The black miasma of my rage coiled around me thick enough to choke on, and through the glass doors I watched Lirael walk across the garden toward the enclosure where I kept the panther, her movements unhurried, her posture relaxed.
She was going to feed the panther. The meat she'd spent time preparing, the herbs she'd carefully mixed and measured—all of it was for that damned cat, not for me.
One of the newer maids cleared her throat softly. "Perhaps Miss Lirael felt the food wasn't prepared to her satisfaction, sir. She might be planning to dispose of it properly rather than—"
"Are you," I said, my voice dropping to barely above a whisper, the kind of quiet that made people's survival instincts scream at them to run, "suggesting that she would rather throw away food than give it to me?" I turned my head slowly to look at her, and whatever she saw in my expression made all the color drain from her face. "Is that what you're implying? That I rank below garbage in her estimation?"
"N-no, sir, I just—" She was shaking now, actually trembling.
"Get out." They scattered like startled birds, the rapid patter of their footsteps fading as they fled to safer parts of the house. I was left alone in the living room, my fingers drumming a slow, deliberate rhythm against the leather armrest, each tap echoing in the oppressive silence like a countdown to something inevitable and violent. Through the glass, I could still see her kneeling beside the panther's enclosure, her silver hair catching the afternoon light, and the animal—the vicious three-hundred-pound killing machine that had taken a handler's arm off just last year—was practically purring under her attention.
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