Chapter 173: It Was in My Pocket

Jasper didn’t get up.

He stayed crouched beside her chair with her hand in both of his. In the other room, footsteps crossed the marble floor. Unhurried.

Blair knew the walk before she saw him.

Killian stopped in the dining room doorway. He was in black, buttoned to the throat, not a crease on him. The water light slid over his silver hair and turned it blue.

He looked at the table. Then at Jasper, crouched at her chair with her hand to his forehead.

His face didn’t change at all.

"Get up."

"Your Highness." Jasper lifted his head and smiled. He stayed exactly where he was. "I don’t remember inviting you."

Killian reached into his jacket and took out a card.

"It was in my pocket."

Caleb made a sound like a laugh that had been stepped on.

"And my man just sent you up," Jasper said.

"Your man couldn’t think of a reason to refuse me." Killian put the card away. "Few people can."

Jasper rose slowly, and let go of her hand last. The hem of his shirt came away from her finger with a red spot on the white silk.

Killian’s eyes went to the spot. Then to her hand. Then to the wall above her head.

"Human. Your coat."

Blair stood. The bitten finger throbbed in time with her pulse.

Jasper crossed the room and stopped in front of Killian. Too close. He slid two fingers inside Killian’s jacket, drew the card out, glanced at it and tucked it back. Then he smoothed the lapel flat with his palm.

"Keep it in a safe place," he said. "I’d hate for you to miss the next one."

Killian looked down at the hand on his chest as if something had been dropped on his shoes.

Blair watched that hand until Jasper took it back.

"Um," Caleb said. Everyone looked at him. "Is she leaving? Is anyone else leaving?"

"No," Jasper said pleasantly.

Caleb nodded, as if that was the answer he’d expected.

Blair stopped beside his chair.

"Go," Caleb whispered. "Before he gets bored."

Jasper laughed. He came back down the table and ruffled Caleb’s hair on the way past, the way you’d pat a dog.

"He knows me so well."

Killian glanced at the chain, and at the ring in the floor, and away.

"Your guests are your business, Silver."

He turned for the door. He didn’t look back at Caleb. Blair did.

Jasper fetched her coat from the couch himself. He held it open, and when she stepped into it he settled it on her shoulders and bent his head beside her ear.

"Friday," he murmured.

Across the room, by the elevator, Killian watched him do it.

The royal car waited at the curb, long and black. One of the Jackal twins sat at the wheel.

Across the street, Jack’s car was still parked where he’d left it. She could just make out the shape of him behind the windshield, and the orange point of a cigarette.

Blair stopped on the curb.

Killian held the rear door open. "Human."

The cigarette brightened, then dimmed. The shape behind the windshield didn’t move.

She got in.

The back seat was wide and dark and smelled of leather. Killian got in after her and the door shut with a soft, expensive sound. The car pulled away from the tower.

Blair held her hand in her lap. The finger had started bleeding again, slow red beads.

Without looking at her, Killian took a white handkerchief from his pocket and held out his hand, palm up.

She looked at it.

"Your hand, human."

She gave it to him. His fingers were cool and dry. He wrapped the handkerchief twice around her fingertip and knotted it, neat and tight, the way he did everything. He didn’t let go right away.

"He bit you."

She didn’t answer.

His thumb pressed once against the knot. "Did you eat anything?"

"No."

"Good."

He sounded pleased. He let go of her hand.

Streetlights slid over them one at a time. Gold across his knees. Gold across his jaw. Dark.

"Why did you come?" she asked.

"I was in the city."

He wasn’t. She didn’t know how she knew. She watched his profile, the straight nose, the silver lashes, and thought of an old woman she’d never seen signing her name at the bottom of an order. Rivers drained. Eggs in a pit.

He knows his grandmother. He doesn’t know me.

She opened her mouth. Closed it.

"What did he want?" Killian asked.

"To talk."

"He was on his knees."

"He was looking at my hand."

"Yes," Killian said. "I saw."

Another streetlight. He turned his head, and his eyes dropped to the handkerchief on her finger, the small red bloom through the white. Then they came up. Past her mouth. To her eyes.

It hit her low and all at once.

Hot. Sour. Tight in the chest, tight in the throat. The urge to take something back and lock it somewhere no one else could reach it. Her nails bit into her palm.

Killian jerked his face to the window. The feeling didn’t leave with his eyes. It drained out of her slowly, like water from a sink, and left her sitting very straight with her coat clutched shut.

Blair stared at her knees.

That had been jealousy. She knew what jealousy felt like. She had been jealous because Jasper touched Killian. Maybe? That didn’t sound right and of course, it made no sense.

She looked at Killian’s lapel. She looked away. She looked back.

Killian kept his eyes on the window the whole way to campus, and his jaw stayed tight. He must have been angry with Jasper. That made sense. He was the Crown Prince, and Jasper had put his hand in his pocket.

Blair pressed her bandaged finger against her lips and kept very still.

She was jealous of Jasper.

Over Killian.

She was never going to tell anyone this as long as she lived.