Miranda walked by them as he exited the chamber, and neither side bothered to mask their contempt for the other. She caught Julian’s eye as he was exiting the chamber, and he held it, clearly recognizing her. It wasn’t just the look of an enemy on the other side of an ideological battle—he looked at her like he knew something she didn’t.

48

48

“Are you going to eat?”

Cora started to shoot him an annoyed glare, then resumed her sentry at the window. It’s D.C., he thought. There isn’t even a skyline to gaze at.

He looked down at the sad caprese sandwich he had ordered for himself, and the fettuccine Alfredo with a side of inoffensive white bread he’d gotten for her, barely touched. Kaveh had made his characteristic suggestion that the two go to an expensive restaurant, of which D.C. had a great many, but someone wasn’t feeling it. So room service it was.

“You need to eat.”

“I know,” she said, and the guilt in her voice was starting to make him feel bad. They’d come up with a system that better worked for her food aversion, but even though she’d put on a couple of pounds in the last month, bringing her back up to the border of underweight, feeding herself did not come easy. Even the protein shake he’d gotten her, which he always had on hand as a last resort if other food made her sick, went neglected.

He got up off the bed, approaching her back and pulling her body to his, looking out the window over her head. He smelled her hair, brushed his fingertips over the soft skin of her neck. He felt her shiver under his touch.

“I know you’re worried,” he said. “I’m worried, too. That’s why I’m trying to take your mind off it.”

He started kissing her neck as he roved his fingers downward, around her shoulders, then her hips. She still wasn’t responding, and he figured he might be getting close to crossing a boundary, and backed off.

“There isn’t really anything else we can do right now,” he said. “Besides, they don’t get the last word, you do.”

She sighed stiffly. “Just . . . I don’t know, it almost felt like Miranda and Julian were in league.”

“They are in league.”

“No, I mean like . . .” She clenched her fist in front of her as if she were trying to pluck the right words from the air.

“You really need to eat,” he said, whispering in her ear in his most seductive tone. “You need to eat before I can eat, if you follow.”

“I mean like, he was looking at me like he knew something,” she said, totally ignoring his overtures. He might as well have been a mannequin for all she was paying attention to him. “Like he had an ace up his sleeve.”