Of course Jacob already knew why Caspian had been hiding Iris away in the hotel. The Aspirian king was smitten with the girl he’d rescued from the woods. However, that didn’t mean that was all there was to it. He was too cautious to assume Iris shared the same motive and that the two were just young and in love. She didn’t strike him as a conniving criminal who was sidling up to the ruler in order to whisper lies into his ear, and she hadn’t given him a reason to believe she wasn’t telling the truth, but it was always safer to rule out the possibility, no matter how slim it was. Startling and threatening her, while cruel, was an effective way of getting her to slip up if something deeper was going on.

He knew he was being harsh though, so when she said that he was hurting her, he reluctantly loosened his grip on her arm. Admittedly, part of the reason why he had reacted the way he had was because he hadn’t expected to see her on the other side of the door. For the last two or more weeks, he hadn’t heard Caspian mention anything about Iris, so he had assumed that she had actually escaped back to the districts. In retrospect, he should have known better. He had seen how much the young king had grown to care about her, so he shouldn’t have been surprised to discover that he was still holding onto her.

Truth be told, even though he had agreed to keep their involvement a secret for the sake of not aggravating Atlas nearly a month ago, he wasn’t fond of the fact that Caspian was so absorbed with someone who had been involved in the rebellion. He had been hoping that the issue would resolve itself, but clearly that wasn’t the case. Whether Iris was using him or they were genuinely only interested in each other as romantic partners, she could only bring the fledgling king trouble. Now that he knew they were still meeting in secret, he wasn’t sure what to do, so he had reacted more aggressively than he probably should have.

As Iris went on about losing track of the days and not wanting to cause any trouble, Jacob had to admit that she wasn’t acting like a person who had been caught in the middle of something devious. She looked beaten down and afraid of being sent back to the prison. He studied her in tense silence before following her gaze to the kitchen, where there were piles of uneaten food. The room looked more like a cage for a hostage than the secret meeting place for two people in love.

Calming from the initial outburst, the guard relinquished his hold on Iris’s arm, though he continued to stand between her and the door. “If you don’t want to be here anymore, then why did you and the king come up with such an elaborate plan to allow you to stay in the capital?” he interrogated her with a skeptical expression. “I was under the impression that you two claim to be in love. Have you changed your mind about him?”