I screamed against the hand as they pulled me into a room and slammed the door shut from behind us. I struggled against the hard body and managed to get the hand off of my mouth. "Let go of me!"

"Relax." I immediately recognized Syn's threatening voice in my ear and I tensed, stopping my movements. He set my feet on the floor and I took a deep breath, when within a flash second, he wrapped his hand around my throat and slammed me against the door. I winced as a pain shot through my head at the contact, and he lowered his face to mine.

"Why are you here?"

I grasped and pulled at his arm to remove his grip on me, but he remained unmoving, his question still lingering in the air. Seeing that I was fighting against him to no avail, I dropped my arms and relaxed myself before looking up into his intense green gaze. "Because you pulled me here," I muttered in an obvious tone, rolling my eyes.

"Watch yourself, Queen. What are you doing in this part of the palace?"

"I don't know. Why were you chasing me in the halls?" I retorted.

"Chasing you?" He asked in confusion, dropping his hand and crossing his arms. "I would never chase you." Ouch. As if the double meaning in his words didn't sting enough, he looked down at me with his lips upturned in a disgusted expression that made me feel insignificant.

What a dick.

"So you're telling me you just happened to grab me at this hour while I was being followed by someone?" I questioned. "Do you enjoy scaring people, Syn? I almost had a heart attack!"

"As amusing as that would be," he muttered. "I've been in my room until I heard you screaming. I ignored it until you got closer to my room, but you were so fucking loud."

"So you heard me screaming earlier?"

He nodded a single time, and it took everything in me not to beat him up right then and there. The only thing stopping me was knowing I'd die if I even touched him.

"And you just ignored it?"

"I did."

"What if I was dying?!"

"How is that any of my business?" He asked. "I don't know you nor do I owe you anything."

"You're an asshole." As soon as the words slipped out of my mouth, regret instantly took over. A flicker of rage swarmed in his eyes, making me swallow a lump in my throat, and wrap my arms around myself.

"I won't ask you twice to watch what you say to me, Queen," he said, taking a step towards me. I stepped back into the wall, not daring to look away from him yet not allowing myself to get close to him. "I may be marrying your sister, but I don't give a shit about family cordiality. If you value your life at all, you'll watch your damn mouth."

My tongue wanted to riddle off every curse word that came to my mind just to see what would happen, but I held it back. I knew enough about him to know that his threats weren't just words to say so he could scare someone, his demeanor alone was enough to do that. His threats were promises.

For fear of not being able to control what I would say next, I crossed my arms and walked to the door. On my way out, my eyes flickered across the bare room. The decorations were sparse yet everything there seemed like it belonged, nothing extra and not a single thing out of place.

His bed looked untouched with its black comforter and pillows containing no visible wrinkles. It was almost one a.m., why wasn't he in bed? The neat stacks of papers along with the pushed out desk chair at the table in the room answered that question for me.

Workaholic?

For some reason, I couldn't imagine Syn focused on anything beside killing people or scaring the life out of them. My hand landed on the doorknob prepared to leave, but Syn clearing his throat made me swivel around. "You dropped your shoes."

I looked towards the area where he pulled me, and saw them laying scattered on the floor a few feet apart. I side eyed him before walking over and bending down to pick them up. "You shouldn't wear that around the palace," he mumbled in a low growl.

"My shoes?"

"The robe." I looked down at the silk robe to see my pebbled nipples through them and crossed my arms over my chest. Shit. "It gives off the wrong impression."

"What impression?" I muttered, looking down at the floor in embarrassment. I prepared my ears to listen to some mygonistic words about how my clothes showed that I was looking for some "sexual attention", and waited in boredom. It wouldn't be the first time I heard that from assholes. I just had a feeling that Syn's bitter tone would sound a lot more hurtful than everyone else's.

"The impression that you're too lazy to care what anyone else thinks." I looked up at him in mild surprise and shrugged a single shoulder.

"And if that is the case?"

"Then that would be intriguing."

My cheeks heated at his words, and the room became small; as if all the walls were closing in on me and I swallowed a lump in my throat. I expected him to say something offensive, but his words seemed complimentary. Were they?

I let them run through my mind a couple times until the word intriguing began to stand out like a sore thumb. Hell no. I didn't want OR need Syn SinClaire to be intrigued with me. I needed to remain away from his attention to complete my job, not right in front of his face...intriguing him.

I cleared my throat, looking up at him and I shook my head. "Wrong. I'm not wearing it because I don't care. I'm wearing it because I want to have sex." I nodded.

He raised a single brow at my words, and I stood up tall to hide the fact that I was bullshitting him. "Then go do that," he said as he turned around and walked back to his chair, losing all interest in me. "If I find you around these halls again, we're going to have serious issues."

"Yes, sir!" I blurted, rushing out of the room before any other words could be exchanged between us. As soon as I closed his door behind me, I laid my hands on my knees and let out a long breath, relieved that I was out of there.

When I stood up, the relief was replaced with the fear from earlier when I was alone in these halls. I looked around in confusion when I saw that all the lights were back on, and I frowned. If Syn didn't grab me or hear me screaming earlier, I would have assumed it was all in my mind.

With a shaky breath, I looked to my left and right, both paths representing halls that led to god knows where. I was hardly paying attention to my pathing as I ran, and Syn's interruption disoriented any sort of idea I would've had of where I came from.

I could've turned around to ask Syn where to go, but god forbid my need for help would intrigue him any further. I had finally gotten his attention off of me, and it needed to remain that way. With that notion, I picked a path and decided to tough it out until I found my way back.

Genesis wasn't wrong when she said that this place was like a maze. It took me an entire hour to find my way back to my bedroom, and that was after dozens of wrong turns and dead ends. I walked into my bedroom taking heavy breaths and tossed my shoes aside. I fanned myself with my hands as I walked deeper into the room, but as I prepared to crash into the bed, a small white piece of paper on the table caught my eye.

Having just moved into here, I hadn't even touched the table let alone set anything down on it besides Felix's gift. I looked around the room before picking up the small paper, and reading the messy writing scribbled across it:

The walls in this castle are thin, and the halls are dark. You outran me this time, my little one, but next time...will you? :)

A shiver ran down my spine as I crushed the note in my hand. This can't be happening again. I rubbed my temples as a mixture of fear and stress found its way into my mind. This here was one of the main reasons I never left Heaven. As soon as I stepped out of the gates, strange notes would pop up leaving me perplexed and uneasy.

They started when I was fifteen, but they used to be a lot more playful with the same small nickname for me...little one. I could find the anonymous notes on trips with my parents telling me that they liked what I was wearing that day, or giving me unneeded life advice.

As I got older, the notes became darker, but they never reached out face to face. Xyla told me I should be flattered to have a secret admirer, but the dedication after all of these years didn't flatter me at all.

It terrified me.

I ripped the crumbled note into tiny pieces and stuffed them into the drawer beside my bed. Even though they were in this room at some point, I took comfort in the fact that they never hurt me, or tried to see me. I just need to survive the next couple of months here and ignore the notes, then I'd be free to go home...

and never come back.

The exhaustion from the events of the entire day didn't leave moments for my mind to distract itself with random things. Instead, I passed out and didn't wake up until well into the next day.

Shock wasn't the word to describe my reaction when I saw that I was just waking up at three in the afternoon. I hopped out of bed at lightning speed to shower and got dressed as best as I could before dashing out of the room.

Xyla had hardly talked to me since I arrived, and I needed to take the day to find out why.