The bathroom door opened and a burst of warmth and steam curled out as Graysen entered our rooms rubbing his wet hair with a towel. I'd learned over the past few days that Graysen liked long showers, really long showers, spending time luxuriating under the rainfall of water. The man spent more time in the bathroom than I did. Which had suited me perfectly this morning.

Despite the shower, he looked terrible. Worn out and exhausted. His face was more than shadowed with stubble—he was on the cusp of growing a beard.

"Good morning, dickface," I cheerfully greeted him.

"Wychthorn," he replied in a low gruff voice as he stalked past, not even looking my way.

His skin glowed with the after-effects of the shower and its golden hue contrasted against the plain white t-shirt and dark denim jeans that hugged his muscular body.

He neatly folded the white towel over the back of a dining chair, arched his spine, and raked his hands through his damp hair, finger-combing the locks. Barefoot, he turned and padded over to the kitchenette, found a tall glass, filled it with water, and headed straight for his work desk. After he placed the glass down on the desk, my gaze sharpened on how he adjusted its position several times so that the glass sat dead-center on the square wooden coaster.

He flopped down on the rollaway chair and when he glanced at the laptop I'd superglued last night, he gave a long, weary sigh through his nose. Pulling a drawer open, he took out a pen and notepad and hunched over his desk, his back to me.

I mindlessly walked around the room. Bright morning sunshine poured into the room, heating my bare skin, and I savored the delicious taste of the croissant filled with strawberry jam. I'd taken to eating them every breakfast, freshly baked by the kitchen servants and delivered by Penn, piping hot. Their flaky pastry was perfect for the cruelty I was inflicting on Graysen. I drifted around the room, bored, and purposely dropping flakes onto the floor—leaving behind a trail of pastry crumbs.

This morning I'd woken up and found outside my bedroom door a box filled with a variety of toys for my wraith-wolf—ropes to tug on, rubbery sticks, and tennis balls to play fetch with. I refused to think about how kind an offer it was for Sage. Instead, I used the gift to my advantage. I was half-heartedly playing fetch with Sage while I ate. I kicked a tennis ball and the enormous wraith-wolf bounded about, crashing into furniture to get the toy like an excited puppy.

I could see Graysen bristling as Sage knocked into the coffee table and shunted it forward as he whined and pawed at the ball beneath it.

Graysen, like me, was growing more and more agitated with the situation of sharing a space with one another. Psychological warfare was the only thing left for me. I'd been given plastic forks and knives to eat with—like a godsdamned prisoner—after I'd attacked him with my keenly-sharpened spoons a few days ago.

He was also, curiously, a neat freak and a little compulsive with symmetry. I'd been testing my theory for the past few days. In the past year, when we'd been forced to spend those days together, I hadn't really paid much attention, and now I was trying to unearth my memories of him. I had scratchy impressions of him aligning cutlery and crystal tumblers. But stuck here with him, it was obvious just how fastidious he was in his personal domain.

I'd gone through everything in his rooms, trying to learn something more about the man who kept me locked away like a prized possession. The cupboards where he kept his extensive collection of board games and where I'd found his old arts and crafts box a few days ago were perfectly arranged in box size. In the tallboy, all his t-shirts and jeans were tidily arranged. Everything was kept neat and orderly, even the drawer that housed his nick-nacks, coins and seashells, and other odd things he'd collected, as well as the origami he'd folded carefully into little animals and birds—lots of tiny paper birds, roosting or wings spread wide in mid-flight.

The wall dedicated to his library of books were separated into fiction and non-fiction, and then into subject matter and author order. Even his car and motorbike magazines were lined up in date sequence. I was surprised he hadn't gone as far as incorporating the Dewey decimal system into his personal library.

And what's more his clothes were color-coordinated.

Color. Coordinated.

And that was saying something for someone who only wore whites, grays, and blacks, with the odd smattering of navy.

On the makeshift wardrobe, his suits and shoes, even his white dress shirts were lined up according to the specific shade of white they were, like a color chart in a paint shop.

Crisp white, snow, milk, porcelain, mother of pearl, ivory...

Ridiculous.

Every morning and evening I'd intentionally shift my cleansers, moisturizers, and serums about the vanity, leaving them in a disorganized mess, and afterward, when I re-entered the bathroom, I'd find them neatly lined up, in order of height and spaced evenly apart.

Earlier this morning, I'd found them arranged in use order as if Graysen watched and studied and learned.

He just couldn't help himself.

Traits that might be adorably cute on a ruthless man who crushed dangerous men, if I, in turn, didn't want to smother him with a pillow. I was just waiting for him to fall prey to his insomnia and then—Good night, Graysen Crowther!

I rubbed the pads of my thumb across my fingers, freeing them from the croissant pastry. Crumbs and flakes scattered on the carpet and I enjoyed seeing Graysen tense even further as if he could hear every strike of pastry hitting the floor. He was so on edge, his shoulders were almost up to his ears as he hunched over the desk, scribbling away on his notepad.

"What are you working on?" I asked, not because I was inquisitive, but wanting to annoy him further.

"Just a to-do list," he replied, tapping his pen against the open pad.

I called fucking bullshit on that. But what did I care if he were scribbling down items he needed from the grocery store or working on a list of what needed to happen next with the Widowmakers after they'd been routed?

Sage bounded back up and dropped the chewed tennis ball at my feet. I kicked it. This time I aimed for the couch. The ball bounced off the rolled armrest, struck a thin-legged side table, and knocked it over. It fell with a thunk onto the carpet. Sage, barking loudly, was after the ball in an instant, crashing into the side table and setting it spinning across the floor and slamming into the wall with a thunderous crack.

"Do you mind," Graysen gritted out, without turning around.

"You're the one trapping a fully-grown wraith-wolf here with the both of us," I shot back, flipping him off behind his back. Seriously, he was the one who bought those toys for Sage. Idiot. Then I stabbed my middle finger into the air behind his back once more because it fucking felt good doing it.

"You do realize I know you're flipping me off?" he snapped, slapping his pen down on the notebook he'd been scribbling on.

I straightened, wondering if he'd sensed what I had been doing. "Eyes in the back of your head, dickface?" I crooned. I waved my hands in the air. "Those Crowther superpower senses of yours felt the displacement of air?" I rapidly flipped him off with both hands—kept flipping him off.

He didn't bother turning around to address me. "Nope," he said, popping the 'p' and stabbing a forefinger at the glass of water on his desk.

Leaning forward, I tried to see what he meant and then saw my reflection on the curved surface of the glass. Gods-fucking-dammit!

Scowling, I rolled my eyes and pulled a face.

"Saw that too," he added.

"Then free me," I chant-sang. "Set me free!" And I kept chant-singing it, around mouthfuls of croissant and strawberry jam as I stamped about the room. Until, finally, he spun around in his chair. I think he was about to say something else to me—probably to shut the hells up—but as soon as his gaze took in the pastry-crumbed carpet, it went straight out of his head. His black eyes rounded, blazing with a strange mixture of ire and utter disbelief.

"I just...fucking...what is this?!" he yelled, rising to his full height, glaring down at me like I was some kind of feral child that had been forced upon him.

I just grinned back and licked my fingers clean from the sticky sweet jam.

Stomping over to the utility closet, he opened the door and pulled the vacuum cleaner out. Yanking the cord free, he stalked over to the wall socket, jammed the plug in and switched the machine on.

A low humming sound filled the room as he sucked up all the crumbs off the carpet, shooting me dark looks every so often. I simply returned a cocky smile. He then followed me around the room with the vacuum cleaner, sometimes knocking into the backs of my heels as he sucked up all the flakes of pastry I kept dropping on purpose as I breezed about the sun-drenched room.

Oh my gods, this man was ridiculous!

He turned off the vacuum cleaner and rested a foot on top of it. "See this," he said, scowling and pointing a finger down at the machine. "How about you use it, or sit down like any other well-mannered child at the table with a godsdamned plate and eat your breakfast off of it!"

Holding his gaze, I tore a flaky strip off the last bite-sized remainder of the croissant and dropped it on the floor beside my bare feet

"I can't fucking take this anymore!" he bellowed, throwing his hands up in the air.

"Then let me go!" I roared back and flung the last of my breakfast at him. He struck out at it, batting it away, and the croissant fell to the floor, whereupon Sage snapped it up and devoured it quickly.

Graysen bared his teeth at me and snarled. Infuriated, he tore off the to-do list from his notepad and shoved it into his back pocket. Striding to one of the tall sets of drawers, he yanked a drawer open and snatched out a pair of socks, tugging them onto his feet before grabbing a leather jacket from his makeshift wardrobe.

I followed, sticking close, as Graysen stormed up to the linen cupboard. He flung the door open and dug around the back of the top shelf behind the blankets for his one and only pair of boots he had left after Sage had chewed all his other shoes to bits last night.

I knew the moment when his fingers had latched around the boots because his mouth fell open and his eyes grew impossibly wide. The golden flecks around the irises shone brightly as he stared inside the cupboard in incredulity.

A heartbeat later, his nostrils flared and the stress lines in his face creased even deeper. He rounded on me, fury staining his stubbled cheeks, and shoved the boots at my face. "What the...what the fuck is this?"

I canted forward, squinting, and made an Mmmm-ing sound as if I was thinking. "It says,"—as I drew my finger over the words I'd written with a gold gel pen in big fat letters across the leather of each boot— "Property of Mr. Dickface."

"I can read," he hissed at me. "I know what it fucking says!"

He manically shook the boots in front of my face and glitter loosened from the furious motion fell to the floor in a stream of pinks and reds and gold. "YOU. SPARKLED-UP. MY. FUCKING. BOOTS?!"

"So pretty," I grinned, straightening and shimmying my shoulders. "You'll be the envy of all your brothers."

I had a lot of fun while he'd been showering—bedazzling his boots with glitter and sequins and studding them all over with pretty fake gems.

His mouth thinned to a white line, and he was muttering beneath his breath as he gave in and bent over to jam a foot into one of the boots. And then—

His face twisted with pain. "Fuuuck!"

I cocked my head to the side, blinking innocently and trying not to snicker. "Something wrong, asshole?"

He briefly squeezed his eyes shut as if he was trying really hard not to explode. Easing his foot free, he kept his furious, pain-edged gaze on mine as he pulled three wall tacks out of the bottom of his foot.

Hitching a shoulder, I shrugged. "Your arts and crafts box had loads of fun things in them."

Graysen stalked over to the dining table, tipped both his boots upside down, and the metal wall tacks I'd dropped in there earlier, along with a few pink sequins that had come free from the glue, fell and rattled all over the surface.

Shoving his feet into each boot and running each of the zippers up, he couldn't even look at me as he strode past and left our quarters in his pink sparkly boots, slamming the door behind him.

I headed to the balcony. The tower's magic brushed against my skin, raising the fine hair on my body, as I stepped through the space Graysen had carved in the walls. I leaned over the stone railing. My long hair draped and swayed in the brisk breeze like ocean currents teasing seaweed. I watched the goings-on below, the servants and soldiers crossing the inner courtyard, until a few minutes later, I heard the low rumble of Graysen's motorbike. I snatched the barest glance of him in the distance, as he streaked down the long winding driveway and disappeared into the thick copse of trees that separated the fortress from the estate's gates.

He always left the estate for a few hours every day, and when he returned to his rooms from wherever he'd been, he'd come back with the faintest scent lingering on him: an earthy smell as if he'd strode through a forest; the stale smell of cigarettes and alcohol, a bar he'd sat in for a few hours; or like yesterday, a mixture of pungent scents as if he'd walked through a spice bazaar.

Knowing that I was here, stuck alone, just me and Sage for a few hours while he was gone, I pushed off the railing and headed back inside.

I needed a plan, and I needed out of this room. The only way free was Graysen—none of the other Crowthers had come up here. His brothers had returned home last night, and Ferne had kept well away the past few days.

Graysen was it.

I needed this rope around my neck gone, and he was the only Crowther here that could untie the noose collaring my throat and set me free.

I flopped, straight-backed onto the couch, gnawing at my bottom lip and wondering how to break him. The first thing to do—because I knew he'd never untie the rope's knot—was to get myself out of this tower.