Chapter 215

Jareth Carrington looked at Celestia Brooks’ face—calm, almost too calm—and felt an ache of worry turning in his gut. She looked still, but he knew better. That stillness? It was just her armor. He opened his mouth, ready to ask what was really eating at her, but the words choked before they made it out. After wrestling with himself in silence, Jareth gave up. “You said you wanted some apple, right? I’ll peel one for you,” he said as he sat down on the chair by the bed. He reached for the fruit knife in the drawer, but before he could even start, her voice cut through the air, low and cool like a mountain breeze. “Don’t bother.” She glanced at him, face expressionless but with the faintest flicker in her eyes. Her earlier request for apples had only been a smokescreen to shut Isabelle Ryan up. She hadn’t expected him—the privileged guy who probably hadn’t touched a fruit knife in his life—to actually take her words seriously and get hands-on like this. It caught her off guard, sure, bu