Merrick's POV
The moon told me it was midnight.
I knew this without checking - the angle of the light through the window, the silence that arrived at that specific hour when even the inn's fire had reduced itself to ash.
I was lying on my bed fully dressed, staring at the ceiling, and I was not sleeping.
This was partly because I had a plan to execute in the next hour and sleeping felt like a crime. It was partly because the conversation in the yard kept replaying itself with persistence. The look on her face when she'd said I saw the doubt. The step back she'd taken. Mounting her horse and riding away.
And it was partly because of the sounds from the room next to mine.
I pressed my arm over my face and stared at the ceiling through it.
My heightened senses were, in moments like this, a curse.
