Chapter 35

Kayla

I blinked at Nicholas, unsure if I had just heard him correctly.

“You want to break her out?” I whispered, grabbing his arm and pulling him away from the interrogation room door, out of Grace’s earshot. “Are you insane?”

Noah looked like he was about to burst. “She’s a guild prisoner, Nicholas,” he hissed. “You can’t just break her out. They’ll track you down and lock you up here with her.”

Nicholas pulled his arm free from my grip and narrowed his eyes. “If there’s even a chance she knows something about my mother’s death, then I can’t just leave her here to rot. The guild… they’ll kill her eventually. You know they will.”

He turned to Noah then, who just stared at him incredulously for a moment. A silent conversation seemed to pass between them before Noah’s shoulders slumped slightly.

“You’re impossible, Nicholas.”

“You do realize that she might not actually know anything, right?” I pointed out. “She could just be making stuff up to get you on her side. For all you know, she’s already turned to the guild and they’re plying her with the very breadcrumbs that you’re following so blindly.”

Nicholas’s jaw clenched, his amber eyes flashing as he turned to me again. “I believe her,” he said simply.

I didn’t know what to say to that. Nicholas was such an… enigma sometimes. How could he trust her so easily, when she was sitting in that room talking about the lost ruins of an ancient civilization that never existed?

“Nicholas—” I began, but he cut me off.

“I believe her,” he repeated.

Noah and I exchanged glances. I hardly knew Noah, but I could tell we were thinking the same thing.

“Nicholas,” Noah said slowly, placing a hand on Nicholas’s shoulder, “maybe you should give it some more time before—”

“I said, I believe her,” Nicholas snarled, wrenching his shoulder away from Noah’s grip. “And I plan on getting her out before the guild kills her down here. If she knows something, anything, about who or what led to my mother’s death, then I can’t just stand by and let them… erase her.”

I didn’t have a response to that. How could I? He was right. The guild wouldn’t hesitate to silence Grace if they thought she was no longer useful. Or for all we knew, she would die of cold and starvation down here.

And as much as I hated to admit it, Nicholas’s stubborn determination was almost… admirable.

Noah sighed, dragging a hand through his hair. “Fine, but getting her out isn’t going to be easy. Do you have a plan?”

“Not yet,” Nicholas admitted. “We’ll need to move carefully. If the guild finds out we’ve been helping her, we’re all in big trouble.”

“Comforting thought,” I muttered. I glanced Noah, who looked pale and weary. “What about you?” I asked, gesturing toward him. “You’re an employee here, right? Can’t you… I don’t know, pull some strings to get her released on house arrest or something? Anything to get her out of that cell?”

Noah snorted as if I’d just said the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

“I’m just an accountant,” he scoffed. “I hardly hold any sway over the guild, if any. All I have is a set of keys and a penchant for making friends who are bad for me.”

As Noah spoke, he shot a withering glance at Nicholas, whose lips tugged up a little at the corners. “Hey, you’ve had plenty of chances to stop being my friend over the years,” Nicholas quipped.

Noah just rolled his eyes.

With a sigh, I glanced back at the closed door, where Grace sat alone in her cold, dark cell. It didn’t feel right to leave her here. Not after what she’d told us. Not after seeing how fragile and terrified she was. But Nicholas was right—rushing into this without a plan would get us all killed.

We decided to leave Grace for the night until Nicholas could situate her rescue. It wasn’t easy to watch the handcuffs go back around her wrists, but we didn’t have much of a choice. Noah promised to keep an eye on her until we could get her out, and with that, Nicholas and I headed home.

The motorcycle roared to life beneath us as we sped away from the guild hall. The cold wind bit at my face, and I tightened my grip around Nicholas’s waist, trying to focus on the steady hum of the engine rather than the lingering image of Grace’s haunted eyes.

By the time we pulled into the driveway, the windows to the house were glowing warmly with amber lighting, and fragrant smoke billowed out of the chimney. Nicholas killed the engine, and I climbed off, pulling my helmet free and shaking out my hair.

It felt… wrong to come back to this cozy, spacious home after being in that cell. I didn’t know if I trusted or believed Grace, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t right for someone to have to live like that.

As Nicholas parked the bike, I hesitated, glancing up at him. “Can we… Can we go back to see her? I mean, regularly. To bring her food, or something warm to wear. Just… so she’s a little more comfortable while you figure out her escape.”

His head turned toward me, his expression unreadable in the dim light. For a moment, I thought he might argue, but then he surprised me.

“Yeah,” he said simply. “We can do that.”

I blinked, caught off guard by his agreement. “Really?”

He shrugged, setting his helmet down. “If that’s what you want, then we’ll do it.”

There it was again—that glimpse of the man beneath the mask. I stared at him for a moment, feeling my frustration with him soften just a little. Maybe, just maybe, there was more to Nicholas Reynolds than I gave him credit for.

But he was still a prick ninety percent of the time.

We walked inside, the house warm and inviting. But when we headed upstairs, Nicholas didn’t follow me to the bedroom; he headed toward his study.

“Where are you going?” I asked, my brow furrowing.

“To my study,” he replied without looking back.

I frowned. “Your study? Why?”

He stopped at the end of the hallway. “You seemed uncomfortable sleeping in the same bed as me last night,” he said matter-of-factly. “But if we sleep in separate bedrooms, it’ll raise questions. Me staying in my study is easy to explain, though: I was working late and fell asleep at my desk. Problem solved.”

“You don’t have to put yourself out for me,” I said, my voice quieter than I thought it would be.

“It’s not about you,” he said, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. “It’s about keeping the guild off our backs.”

With that, he turned and disappeared around the corner, leaving me standing there with a strange, inexplicable weight in my chest.

An hour later, I found myself standing in the kitchen in my pajamas, staring down at a steaming mug of tea and a few biscuits on a tray. I still felt bad that Nicholas was sleeping on his office sofa just to make me comfortable, especially after how I had seen the way his tall frame was scrunched up on it that morning.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I grabbed the tray and made my way upstairs to his study. The door was slightly ajar, and I raised my hand to knock, but the sound of muffled voices stopped me. Nicholas’s voice and… a woman’s.

I stepped closer, my brow furrowing. The door creaked open just enough for me to see her.

Nora.

She was standing near Nicholas’s desk, dressed in nothing but a silky nightgown that clung to her curves. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, her expression smug as she looked down at where Nicholas was sitting on the couch.

Nora suddenly looked up, but I slipped out of sight just in time. My heart pounded for reasons I couldn’t fully understand, and I gripped the tray a little tighter. Had I just walked in on them…?

Before I could leave, Nora murmured something unintelligible to Nicholas and walked out of the room, shutting the door behind her. She took a couple of paces away, but stopped when she saw me.

“Oh, Kayla,” she purred, her cold eyes flickering up and down my body—taking in my flannel pajamas, the tray in my hands, the loose braid over my shoulder. “I didn’t see you there.”

Before I could say another word, she curled her lips into a sly smile and brushed past me, nearly knocking the tray from my hands.