Excerpt of Honor Bound by Jessica J. James

Hunter walked out of his chamber as the first rays of light began brightening the night sky. Passing his houseguest’s new bedchamber, he stepped through the doorway when he noticed she had somehow pulled herself onto the wide windowsill. 

“It’s magical, isn’t it?” she said without altering the direction of her eyes.

Hunter did not answer at first. He just stared at the figure silhouetted in the window. With her hand pressed against the glass, it appeared she was trying to touch the sun as it entered the morning sky.

“It’s ga-lorious no matter how many times you see it!”

She glanced around when no one answered. “Oh, it’s you.” She turned back to the window in grim silence.

“I’m glad to see you’re feeling better.”

His words were met by icy silence. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, though he could tell the action was not from weariness. The way in which a nerve throbbed in her temple revealed that each movement, no matter how slight, caused her great pain. How she had managed to pull herself onto the wide sill he could not see. But he was glad he had taken the added precaution of moving the bed next to the window.

“I will make every effort to see that your stay here is comfortable.” He strode closer to the bed when she did not respond. “Did you hear me?”

“I heard you.” She answered without looking at him.

“Why must you continue this defiance?” He couldn’t keep the frustration from revealing itself in his voice. “Am I so unlikeable?”

“No more so than anyone else who fights against the flag of their nation.”

Hunter took the blow like a true soldier. His young houseguest had apparently awakened from her long slumber with a soul no less full of hostility than when he had seen her some months before.

He watched her eyes soak up the landscape outside, and when she spoke again, it was in a low, confused tone. “The seasons seem to have changed without me.”

“It’s February,” Hunter said, knowing she was trying to calculate the lost months. “You were in Libby through December. I petitioned for your release as soon as I heard about your imprisonment.”

“Heard about my imprisonment?” She turned her head slowly toward him. “And it somehow came as a surprise to you?”

Hunter looked down at the floor, knowing his story sounded like he was shifting blame. “As I told you, there was a miscommunication.”

Andrea dismissed him once more by closing her eyes, and he dismissed the thought that he would ever again see anything but a scowl upon her face. The warm, enchanting smile she had worn at the ball must have been part of the act, because he had yet to see any semblance of it here.