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LEX: lol what

ICE PRINCE: That was an emoji. The small sideways face.

ICE PRINCE: I am attempting to learn.

I laughed so hard that Jason mumbled “Harold, leave it” in his sleep and rolled over.

LEX: feeling better?

ICE PRINCE: Yes. Thank you.

LEX: for what

ICE PRINCE: For not letting me be a fool.

I looked at that message for a long, long time. Then I typed something and deleted it, and typed something else and deleted that too. In the end, all that went out was:

LEX: ur welcome. dont do it again

ICE PRINCE: I will try.

ICE PRINCE: Lex.

LEX: what

ICE PRINCE: Goodnight.

I put the phone on my chest and lay there in the dark, with the corners of my mouth aching from smiling. And I thought about what he’d said in the corridor. A hand around the throat of everything I am. And how he’d stood there, starving and shaking, and refused me.

I’ve been wanted plenty of times. Wanted for my name, my money, my face, my fists. I know what it looks like when someone wants a thing.

I’d never been wanted by someone who was afraid to take it.

My phone buzzed against my ribs.

ICE PRINCE: I am glad you were the one who found me.

I closed my eyes.

I said, out loud, quietly, to nobody, “Oh, no.”

Not oh no, I love him. I’m not an idiot. It was smaller than that, and worse. It was the feeling you get on the ice when you’ve gone too far past the blue line and you realize you can’t stop, so you just lean, and see.

Then I turned over, and put the pillow over my head, and didn’t sleep at all.

Chapter 13

MAKSIM

What Tamsin Said

Tamsin took one look at me and said, “Oh, for God’s sake. Sit.”

I sat.

It was a quarter to one in the morning, and the Sable was at its quiet hour. The piano had stopped. The last of the late guests had drifted back to their hotels, and Marcus was polishing glasses at the far end of the bar with the tenderness of a man caring for small animals. She led me into her office, shut the door, and put me in the chair with the sunken cushion. Then she poured me a glass of red I did not want and stood over me with her arms folded until I drank it.

“How long?”