Victory. The word rang hollow. There was none of the usual triumph from whenever I discovered the truth, only hollowness tightening my chest, sharp enough to steal my breath. I had so many questions, but none of them would come, eclipsed by my strange sense of loss because the man standing before me no longer felt like the one I had come to know, replaced by a stranger.
I had prepared myself for deception, guarded against it at every turn. But for all my caution, somewhere between his teasing smiles and carefree charm, I’d let my guard slip just enough for him to take something I had never meant to relinquish.
After a lifetime of taking from others, I had never expected to feel the loss so keenly. I had shown him more of myself than I ever had with anyone else, trusted him with pieces I had spent years concealing, felt things I had not known I was capable of feeling.
He had been my anchor in this shifting world of illusions…only for me to discover that he had been an illusion too. With the realization, it felt as though something precious had been stolen from me, the thief becoming the victim. The ground beneath me seemed to give way, leaving nothing to steady me.
This was the cost of playing with fire. I had known the danger, and still allowed myself to be burned.
I struggled to gather my faltering composure, a difficult endeavor when so little of it remained. It wasn’t until this moment that I realized how much of my confidence had always been a mask of my own, something I hid behind to keep the world from seeing the loneliness that lay beneath.
“It was all a lie,” I managed at last when I finally located my missing voice.
He took in my expression and lifted his hands in a placating gesture that did little to steady the storm inside me. “Don’t be soquick with your accusations and mistake a mask for ill intent—playing a part is not the same as being untrustworthy.”
I knew deception and motive were not always part of the same tangled web, but after the warning I’d received, I found it impossible to separate them. “What is this partnership to you?” I asked.
“An arrangement,” he said smoothly. “One I intend to be beneficial to us both. That hasn’t changed.” His gaze held mine, steady and deliberate. “I did what I had to in order to earn your trust. That may have required…certain tactics. But softening your resistance is not the same as using you.”
He spoke with the same controlled confidence as the Evander I’d come to know, giving me reason to hope that not every part of him had been playing a part. I hated that I even cared, that I felt anything beyond the desire to use his knowledge in my own quest.
But however much I despised myself for caring, I wanted to believe him. That was the most dangerous part. Because even now—after the mask had slipped—I could still see glimpses of the man I thought I had come to know beneath the performance. And that made him far more dangerous than any enemy who had never pretended otherwise.
His gaze lingered on me, as though he could read every thought as it formed. His mouth curved faintly. “As a thief, you above all should understand that the world is rarely so simple. You’ve built a life on deception, disguises, and carefully crafted illusions.” His eyes flicked over me, assessing. “And it seems you’re still playing a part, even now when not performing a heist. As far as I’m aware, you haven’t stolen anything since arriving here.”
His words unlocked another suppressed memory—the only object I’d been tempted to steal since arriving—the piece of the crown I’d touched in the vanished prince’s chamber, the veryobject that had drawn me into this tangled web of shifting realities and fractured truths.
I’d forgotten about it until now, as though the memory had been taken from me like the others between wakefulness and sleep and only now returned. It should have been the first thing I investigated. How many other recollections had slipped through my grasp without my noticing?
Carefully, I replayed the moment in my mind—the shattered fragment of crown I’d touched, the glimpses of the prince and his grief. And then another memory followed…or at least I assumed it was a memory, but it felt different than the usual ones I withdrew from objects. The prince in a sun-drenched meadow, smiling as he plucked a wildflower and held it out to someone. I blinked, trying to focus on that image, but it faded, leaving behind a twinge of jealousy over who the prince might be meeting.
A quiet unease settled over me as I glanced around the chamber. If this room truly marked the origin of the curse as the vision suggested, then perhaps it was no coincidence the memory had returned here. Perhaps this place did not merely hold memories…butrestoredthem.
Evander studied me, his gaze sharp with the same calculating awareness that had settled over him since the vision. Something flickered in his expression as his attention drifted back to the mural—recognition, followed by a look I’d come to know intimately thanks to my fellow thieves: calculation.
I felt the shift the moment his gaze returned to me, the same unsettling awareness I had felt countless times before—the moment a mark became aware of a thief who had been watching too closely.
I met his stare, determined to hold my ground…only to I find myself lost in the turmoil of his eyes. The resolve I’d glimpsed there faltered, softening into something far more dangerous—uncertainty, as though the path before him was one he was not entirely certain he wished to follow.
He lifted a hesitant hand. For a moment it hovered between us, suspended, as though he questioned whether he had the right to close the distance. Then his fingertips brushed my cheek.
My breath caught. The caress was light, fleeting, but it sent warmth racing through me, an unsettling contrast to the storm of mistrust still churning inside my heart. “It seems unproductive to waste your charm on a woman who now knows it for what it truly is: a weapon.” Yet even as the words left my lips, I didn’t move away.
He didn’t answer, as if he had forgotten why he’d reached for me in the first place. His fingers traced the line of my cheek, slow and almost hypnotically, as though the motion itself held his attention.
I knew the danger, knew what it would cost to let him take even more of the heart I had fought so hard to protect…yet I didn’t pull away.
“You’ve created quite the complication,” he murmured. “Why did I have to remember?” The anguish in his voice startled me more than any confession, a crack in his carefully controlled mask. I recognized the raw pain, the weight of memories better left buried.
“Some memories are meant to stay forgotten,” I said quietly.
He turned away, facing the mural. His lips parted, as though he might say more—something that might have changed everything between us—but whatever it was, it remained unspoken. His expression hardened. “Nothing,” he said abruptly. And still, he did not step away.
He suddenly stiffened, as if he’d just noticed something. His jaw tightened, almost imperceptibly. And for the first time since I’d met him, Evander looked afraid. Another unseen battle raged within him, before resolve settled over him.
He turned away from the mural briskly. “We’ve been here long enough. We need to leave.”
His hand firmly closed around my wrist, pulling me towards the door. I started to follow, until something tugged me back—the familiar lure of magic, seducing my attention.
