"Why the sudden question, though?" Julian asked, his voice calm and easy. There was a genuine note of curiosity in it and no hint of suspicion beneath the words.
Sera hesitated.
It was small — barely a pause — but it was there. Her hands slowed slightly for a mont and her eyes dropped for just a fraction of a second before returning to his face.
She acts very well, Julian thought, admiring the young maid’s skills.
"Go on," he said after a mont. "You can be frank with ."
He gave her exactly what she had been waiting for, the opening she needed without making it feel like one.
Sera took a quiet breath.
"Well, my lord..." she began carefully. "The news about your... obsession." She paused on the word, choosing it carefully. "With Lady Olivia and Lady Vanessa." Another pause, shorter this ti. "It has spread through the castle."
She watched his face as she said it.
His brows drew together slowly. His jaw tightened at the sa ti.
Sera noted both.
She kept her voice gentle, almost sympathetic, when she continued. "So I wondered," she said, "whether you thought of them the sa way. The way you think of other won."
The room went very quiet.
Julian looked at her.
He didn’t say anything right away. He simply looked at her with that sa calm, unreadable expression he had worn for most of the evening. But there was a change — a small one, almost impossible to notice. It wasn’t obvious. Most people wouldn’t have seen it at all.
Sera did.
And Julian knew she would.
She held his gaze and waited, keeping her own expression open and soft, the picture of soone who had asked an innocent question and was simply waiting for an innocent answer.
The silence stretched.
"You can leave now."
Sera blinked. "Young master?"
He shifted forward in the chair and stood, straightening to his full height. He looked down at her for just a mont and then he reached down, pulled his trousers up and began to fasten them.
"You can leave now," he said again.
He offered nothing else. No explanation. No expression she could read or bring back to whoever was waiting for her report.
She was still on her knees, and for a mont she simply stayed there, looking up at him with an expression that she was working very hard to keep neutral.
Everything had been going well— the careful give and take of the conversation, the small things he had let slip, the way his composure had loosened briefly when she had pressed in the right places. She had been building toward sothing.
And now, without warning or transition, he was pushing her away.
"Young lord—" she started.
Julian looked at her.
The temperature in the room dropped and the air felt several degrees colder than it had been a mont before.
Sera’s next words died before they reached her lips.
She closed her mouth.
"I am not in a good mood, Sera," Julian said. His voice did not rise, but there sothing heavy beneath it. "Please leave."
Sera stood very still.
She was good at reading rooms and knew how to tell the difference between a man showing displeasure and a man who was actually done with the conversation. The forr could be worked with; the latter could not.
This was the latter.
She had pushed too far.
The silence continued.
"You can co back tomorrow," Julian added, after a mont.
It was said simply, but Sera understood the aning behind it imdiately. He hadn’t fully dismissed her and was not cutting her off completely. Tomorrow was still open.
Sothing in her shoulders eased by a fraction.
She rose from the floor. The movent was graceful despite everything—she still had enough composure for that. She smoothed the front of her uniform with both hands and took a deep breath. Then she lowered herself into a deep bow, holding it for a full second before straightening again.
"Good night, young master," she said.
Her voice ca out steady. She was proud of that.
Then she turned and walked to the door. It clicked shut softly behind her.
Julian stood still.
He did not move imdiately. He simply stayed where he was, his eyes fixed at the closed door, listening to the faint sound of her footsteps fading down the corridor.
Then he smiled.
That went considerably better than I expected.
Vanessa had truly found a formidable and skilled maid. The woman knew exactly what others wanted to hear, and even if they didn’t, she made sure they would eventually. Her mindset of doing whatever was necessary to extract information was dangerous.
"I bet she is heading to Vanessa right now," Julian said quietly.
He walked to the window and looked out at the dark garden below. A guard passed beneath the torch, armor rattling softly in the quiet air. Julian watched the light move and then disappear around the corner.
He was right, of course.
**
Sera moved quickly through the western corridor, sticking close to the wall. The hour was late and most of the castle had gone quiet. Her steps were restless and hurried, the short skirt of her maid uniform still slightly wrinkled from where it had ridden up earlier.
She paused at a corner, waited for a guard to pass, then continued.
Vanessa’s door was at the end of the corridor. Sera knocked twice.
"Co in," ca the voice from inside.
Sera opened the door, stepped through, and shut it quietly behind her. The mont the latch clicked, the tension in her shoulders eased just a fraction.
Vanessa was seated in the high-backed chair beside the writing desk, one leg crossed over the other. She wore a deep erald robe that clung to every curve of her body, the rich silk shimring in the candlelight. The belt was cinched tight around her narrow waist, pushing her breasts upward so the soft inner curves spilled teasingly through the open collar.
Her hair was down, loose around her shoulders. She held a small glass in one hand and a folded letter in the other, though she had clearly stopped reading so ti ago.
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