Chapter 46: Can I help you?

Outside the window, the grounds were still lit. The guards still at their posts. The small door in the garden wall sat exactly where it had been, twelve feet from the ladder, waiting for the next time she was paying attention.

She thought about the punishment.

She thought about once your leg heals, said in that voice like a date in a calendar, like an appointment already made.

She thought about the forehead.

The kiss he had pressed there was soft, brief, utterly without warning, before standing up and walking away like it was nothing, like it was the most natural thing, like he did that, like that was something he did.

Sienna pressed two fingers to her forehead where it had landed.

Stop it, she told her heart.

Her heart was busy doing the thing. The funny, inconvenient, completely irrational thing it had been doing all evening every time he was.

Why, she thought. Why does it do that? Why does it do that when he. When he holds your ankle as it offends him by being hurt.

When he says Are you okay before he says anything else. When he walks through a room full of the most dangerous people in the world, the only direction he moves is toward you.

Stop, she told herself. He threatened you with a bullet an hour ago. He tied your hands to a bed.

He is keeping you here against your will, and you have a plan, and the plan is the door in the garden wall and nothing, nothing... else.

She nodded to herself. Firm. Decided.

She looked down at the red dress ruined, torn to the thigh, having survived considerably more than any dress should be asked to survive, and felt something move through her that was almost affection.

We did alright, she thought. She stood up carefully.

And somewhere between the bed and the wardrobe, in the quiet of the room with the lamplight and the distant sound of Viktor giving orders somewhere below. Her heart did the thing again.

Quietly. Just once. Traitor, she thought. And kept walking.

—

The doctor was thorough.

Sienna sat on the edge of the bed and listened to him work through his instructions with the patience of someone who had delivered them many times before elevation, rest, no weight on the foot for at least three to four days, the medication schedule, the follow-up

"I’m allergic to that pain medication," she said when he got to the prescription. "But thank you, doctor. I’ll be fine."

The doctor glanced at Viktor. Viktor, standing in the doorway with his arms folded, gave a small shake of his head, not disagreement, something more like. This is what she does, document it, and move on, and see the doctor out.

The light went off.

A blanket appeared from somewhere, settled over her with a quietness that she was already too far under the surface of sleep to properly register.

She slept.

Morning arrived in the way of mornings after terrible nights, too bright, too certain, completely unbothered by what the previous hours had contained.

Sienna woke before the house did.

She lay still for a moment, taking inventory.

The ankle announced itself immediately and at length. She sat up, found it with both hands, and worked thumbs pressing in careful increments along the swollen joint, following the pathways she knew, the ones from the anatomy texts she’d read not because she’d needed to but because the library had them and she’d been curious and knowledge had always seemed like the kind of thing worth accumulating.

It hurt first. Properly hurt, the kind that made her breath go short and sharp.

Then, gradually, it didn’t.

Not gone. But manageable. The difference between a thing that controlled you and a thing you could work around.

She had always preferred the latter.

The wardrobe had been attended to.

She noticed this without surprise the Kessler household ran on a logic of its own, staff materialising and vanishing, things appearing where they were needed before they were asked for.

A simple dress, clean lines, and comfortable. Flat shoes in her size. Practical. Someone had thought about what she would need this morning and provided it without commentary.

She put them on.

And there, leaning against the wall beside the wardrobe with the upright patience of an object that knew its moment would come. The crutches.

Sienna looked at them.

She picked one up. Tested the height. Set the rubber grip under her arm, took three experimental steps, and confirmed what she already knew she didn’t need them. The ankle, post-massage, post-sleep, was sore and swollen and had opinions, but it would carry her. Slowly. Carefully. But it would.

She looked at the crutches for a moment longer.

Then she thought about the eyes. The cameras. The guards at every corner of every corridor who watched everything and reported upward, and kept the machinery of this house running smoothly. She thought about Viktor, who had said once your leg heals with the calm certainty of a dentist scheduling a filling.

She picked up both crutches. Let him think running is impossible, she thought. Let all of them think so.

The best exits were the ones nobody was watching.

Breakfast was in the morning room.

The maids moved around her with the particular careful energy of people who had recalibrated. Not warm, she wasn’t expecting warmth, warmth took time and trust, and they owed her neither yet, but respectful.

Eyes that met hers briefly and dropped away. Plates set without being asked. The cold hostility of the first days quietly packed away somewhere, replaced by something more neutral, more watchful.

Two of them were still in the dungeon. Sienna was aware that this information was not incidental to the shift in atmosphere.

"Can I help you?" one of them asked, appearing at her elbow.

"No, thank you," Sienna said pleasantly.

She finished her breakfast. Took her time with the tea. Let the morning room do its job of being a morning room while she did the quiet work she did at every meal, now the exits, the sightlines, the rhythms of who moved where and when.

Then she picked up the crutches, arranged her face into the expression of a woman being very careful with an injury, and went outside.