Chapter 104: The Pack Lunch

Astrid Vale

I was still staring at the row of identical doors when Maximus spoke.

"You look lovely," he said again, as though he hadn’t already said it once outside my room, as though repeating it might make it land differently this time.

It pulled my attention back to him anyway, and I looked at him with as much suspicion as I could manage without saying anything at all. He seemed entirely unbothered by it, relaxed in a way that felt almost rehearsed, like tension simply didn’t register with him the way it did with everyone else in this building.

"Come," he said. "Lunch is waiting."

I didn’t move right away. I wanted to ask about the doors, about who was behind them, about whether Ivy was one of them. But he was already walking, unhurried, clearly expecting me to follow without needing to be told twice, and I found myself trailing after him anyway because I had no better option.

As we walked, he started talking about the meal ahead of us, describing it the way someone might describe a dinner for an old friend they’d been waiting to welcome home.

"There’s roasted lamb," he said, "and a bread they only bake for special occasions. I hope you like fish, because the cook insisted on preparing something with the trout as well."

I found the whole thing bizarre. Hours ago I’d been chained to a bed in a medical room. Now this man was walking me through menu options like I was an honored guest arriving for a holiday.

"I’m Maximus Kine. Alpha of the Elarisi." He said.

I nodded, my mind stuck somewhere between looking for a way out and admiring the civilization that these strange people have managed to build under the ground.

Then the smell reached me, and my stomach growled loud enough that I couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened.

He glanced at me, but he didn’t tease me for it the way Xander would have. "You must be starving," he said simply.

He was right. I was.

As we kept walking, I turned the contradiction over in my head, unable to make it fit together cleanly. Nobody here had shouted at me. Nobody had threatened me outright. The woman had tended to my wrists like she genuinely cared whether I bled. He had ordered my restraints removed the moment he saw them. And now he was walking me to lunch like a host receiving family.

But I hadn’t come here willingly. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know where Ivy was, or whether Moonshade even knew I was missing. And I still didn’t know if I was allowed to simply stand up and walk out the front door.

That contradiction unsettled me far more than outright cruelty would have. Cruelty I understood. This, I didn’t.

We reached the dining room, and the sight of it stopped me for half a second. The table was set with more food than I’d seen in one place since arriving at Moonshade, an elaborate spread that looked far too extravagant for a prisoner. Servants moved quietly around the edges of the room, and Maximus gestured toward a chair across from his own.

"Sit," he said.

I did, my caution still intact even as hunger pulled harder than it had any right to. I started eating carefully at first, then less carefully as the taste of actual food after however long I’d gone without it overrode most of my hesitation. He didn’t press me with questions right away, letting the meal stretch out in something that almost resembled normalcy. For a few minutes, I actually forgot where I was.

Then I remembered, and my guard climbed straight back up.

"So," he said eventually, setting down his glass. "Tell me about Moonshade. Do you enjoy it there?"

I looked up at him. "Why does that matter to you?"

"Curiosity," he said easily. "What do you study? Do you have subjects you prefer?"

I answered carefully, giving him the smallest true answers I could manage. He asked about my classes, whether I’d made friends, what the academy grounds looked like this time of year. None of it felt like an interrogation, which somehow made me more willing to answer than I intended to be. I found myself talking more than I meant to, filling silences I should have left alone.

Then he asked, in the same easy tone, "And Reed and Xander Ashwood. What are they like?"

I went still.

He said their names like he already knew exactly who they were to me, which meant he did, which meant whatever this was had never been random at all.

"Why do you know their names?" I asked.

"I know a great many things," he said, not answering the question at all. "Are you close with them? Do you spend much of your time together?"

I studied his face while I answered, looking for anything that might tell me what he actually wanted from that question. "They’re important to me," I said finally, giving him only that much.

Something crossed his expression, brief and unreadable, before he simply nodded and moved on to another question about the academy’s gardens. But my mind had already left the table. I thought about Reed, about whether he’d noticed I was gone yet, about Xander pacing some corridor demanding answers from anyone who’d listen. I thought about whether they knew I was alive. I forced my face to stay calm even as my chest tightened around the thought.

Maximus kept the conversation light for the rest of the meal. He didn’t threaten me. He didn’t demand anything from me beyond the small talk he seemed genuinely interested in. He never once explained why I’d been brought here, and I noticed that too, filed it away along with everything else.

I ate while quietly studying him across the table, unable to shake the same question circling through my mind over and over. If I was a prisoner, why was everyone treating me like a guest? And if I was truly a guest, why hadn’t anyone told me I was free to leave?

I decided not to ask him yet. I wanted to understand him first, wanted to know what kind of man I was dealing with before I gave him the satisfaction of my fear.

When lunch ended, he rose from the table, and I followed him back out the way we’d come. As we reached the corridor, I glanced behind us toward the route we’d walked earlier.

It wasn’t empty anymore.

Two guards stood positioned near the entrance, silent and unmoving, watching without appearing to watch. I slowed slightly. Nobody explained their presence. Nobody stopped me from walking past them. But I understood immediately what it meant.

I looked at Maximus, who continued walking ahead of me as though nothing about the hallway had changed at all, as though guards simply belonged there the same way the white walls did.

I followed him anyway, but my fingers found the sharp edge of the hairpin hidden against my side, and my grip tightened around it without my even deciding to.

I might have been treated like a guest today.

But I understood, walking past those guards, exactly what kind of guest I actually was.