Claire's POV
For the first three months, Alec did not speak to me unless I asked him something directly, and even then his answers came clipped and minimal, like he was rationing words the way a man rations water in a desert he doesn't expect to survive.
I told myself I preferred it that way. Prisoners who talked too much were prisoners who thought they had leverage, and I had learned young never to let anyone believe they had leverage over me. So, I brought him his meals myself, a decision my sister found endlessly amusing, since I have never in my life served anyone anything without an ulterior motive. I watched him eat in silence, and told myself I was simply keeping an eye on an asset.
Alec was smaller than Jace, but he carried himself like someone who had spent a long time making himself smaller on purpose. I noticed it the way I notice everything useful; the deliberate way he kept his shoulders rounded in my presence, the careful blankness he arranged his face into whenever I came near, the flicker underneath it that told me the blankness was work, not nature.
"You don't have to do that," I told him, on the fifteenth day, setting his tray down harder than I meant to.
He blinked at me. "Do what?"
"Perform for me," I said. "I already know you're afraid. Pretending otherwise wastes both our time."
Something shifted behind his eyes, not quite anger, not quite relief. "Would it change anything," he asked carefully, "if I stopped pretending?"
I considered lying to him. I decided, for reasons I did not examine closely at the time, not to. "No," I admitted. "But I'd rather not watch you do it. It's exhausting to witness."
He laughed. It surprised us both, a short, disbelieving huff of a sound, gone almost before it started, like he'd forgotten he still had that in him. "You're strange," he said. "For a woman who bought me like livestock."
"I didn't buy you," I said. "I selected you. There's a difference."
"Enlighten me."
"Livestock doesn't get opinions," I said, "and I very much want to hear yours."
He studied me for a long moment, like he was recalculating something. "Fine," he said slowly. "My opinion is that you're better than whatever act you're putting on for my benefit, and worse than whatever act you're putting on for everyone else's. I haven't worked out yet which one is closer to true."
I left without answering him, because I did not have an answer, and because it had been a very long time since anyone had looked at me closely enough to notice I was wearing more than one mask at all.
He asked about my sister a few weeks later, over another silent tray of food, and I bristled before I understood why. "Is she always like that?" he asked.
"Like what?"
"The way she looks at Jace, I mean." He said, "Like she already own him. Like a transition"
"She does own him," I said. "The same way I own you."
"That's not what I meant."
He was quiet a moment, turning his spoon over in his hand. "I meant….does she ever look at anything like it's just hers to enjoy, and not a transaction?"
The question irritated me more than it should have, mostly because I didn't have a ready answer for it, and I have never liked being caught without one. "My sister enjoys plenty of things," I said. "being nice to strangers just isn't one of them. It's not worth her time"
"And you?" he asked
"I enjoy winning," I said. "It's a different thing."
He studied me the way he did sometimes, like he was reading a language he was only half fluent in and didn't want to guess wrong. "What happens," he asked, "When there's nothing left to win?"
I didn't answer him. I picked up his empty tray instead and left, and told myself the question had been idle curiosity, nothing more, though it followed me down the hall and sat with me long after I'd gone.
CELESTE'S POV
I did not speak to Jace for the better part of a month beyond what the work required. A captive who believes his captor has a heart to appeal to is a captive who wastes your time trying to find it. I wanted his silence, and I resented him faintly for how well he gave it to me, because it meant I had nothing left to be irritated about besides everything else.
I had not expected him to be good at housework. He worked with precision. I found myself, more than once in those early weeks, standing in a doorway a beat longer than necessary simply to watch him work, telling myself it was supervision, knowing, even as I told myself that, how thin the excuse had already worn.
He settled into the house faster than I expected. He learned the kitchen staff's names within a week, learned which hallway floors creaked and adjusted his step accordingly without anyone teaching him, learned, faster than most people who'd lived in that house for years, exactly which rooms wanted to be entered quietly and which ones didn't care. I watched him do it the way I watch everyone I haven't decided yet whether to trust, and told myself, each time I caught myself watching, that this was simply due diligence.
The staff liked him even though they understood to some extent that he was still technically a prisoner. He was quiet with them, careful, unfailingly polite in the way of someone who had learned that politeness cost nothing and occasionally bought a great deal.
I watched the kitchen staff especially warm to him within the first two weeks, the old cook slipping him an extra portion at dinner the way she did for no one else in that house.