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“Then you know I’m not lying,” he says. “You’re so impatient to go against your enemies that you’re starting to see betrayal everywhere.”

“I’m starting to get the sense that you have your own secrets, and all of them revolve around a certain little flower.”

“You’re mistaken.”

“You want her. As you can imagine, this is a problem. Shall I remove you from this task?”

You want her. His smile is ferocious, the way an animal would bare its teeth. “When have I ever failed you, old man?” he says. “You think I’m willing to give up everything I’ve worked for?”

“Love has strange effects on mortal things.”

He laughs, a harsh, bitter sound. “I don’t fall in love.”

“Perhaps you forget how naked your lies are to me.” The god pushes away from the wall, then comes to a stop before him. “I can see the ache in your eyes when she’s near you. I can hear the longing in your voice when you speak about her. I can sense the hesitation in your words now, when you make me a promise you don’t intend to keep.”

“Be patient,” he says. “You’ll get what you want. Can you hear the truth in that?”

The god considers his words thoughtfully, then grasps one of his arms and twists it viciously. Pain explodes through his body. He falls immediately to his knees with a gasp.

When he speaks again, his voice is lower and constrained. “My lord,” he says, bowing his head. “You know I’ll keep my word.”

The god nods his approval, but the satisfaction doesn’t reach his eyes. “I appreciate your loyalty to your duty and your god. But I also think that, perhaps, you need a reminder.”

He says nothing as his patron god produces a fearsome weapon—a whiplike contraption with multiple tails, each one barbed. His thoughts flit unexpectedly to her, to her stunned expression when she’d seen the scars crisscrossing his back.

What happened…? she had asked.

And he’d lied so easily to her, mentioned offhand that they were old wounds from past missions. She’d believed him, just as she always believes him.

The first lash snaps against his back so hard that the sound echoes down the street. He braces himself against the alley’s brick wall, shuddering, dizzy from the pain that washes over him. His jaw tightens so hard that he thinks his teeth might break. But he doesn’t cry out.

The whip lands again. The back of his shirt rips open, bloody fabric shredded, pieces drifting down to the asphalt.

He keeps his eyes closed through the onslaught and thinks instead of the people he loves, who used to love him, who used to remember him. His sister must have graduated from college now. Is she on a train to Paris for the holidays yet, to see her—their—parents? Does his father still save newspaper clippings? Does his mother still spend her Sundays in the garden, pruning their lavender bushes?

He knows they don’t think of him. They will never think of him, will never remember the little son they doted on, took to the gelato shop, read books to before bedtime, gifted a cheap keyboard for Christmas with money they’d painstakingly saved.

The lash falls again. He grits his teeth and thinks of her. Thinks of her wide eyes studying his, her lips so close during the test that he could have kissed her.

He should have kissed her.

His god halts for a moment beside his ravaged, trembling body. And he lets go of the vision, of his family’s faces, of her searching gaze. He lets go of the things in life that are not possible, the paths he will never get to take.

“Remember who you serve,” says his patron god. He lifts the whip again. “And who you live for.”

19

My instructions are to report directly back to Raven after the second test.

But the death of the boy, the car that had almost hit me, the illusion of Laine, the sardonic smile on Étienne’s face when he realized I’d tricked him—all of it has left me shaken, and for a while, I find myself wandering, unwilling to go anywhere except to let myself get lost in the city streets.

The way Étienne had acted at the intersection sits with me, a nagging memory. During the first test, he had helped me get into the museum as a taunt. But this time—this time there was no reason for him to have saved my life, no need to have pulled me out of the way of the oncoming yellow car. If I had been killed, that would have been it for me. Étienne would have won. He would have completed his mission successfully for Thorn, to ensure I fail my confirmation.

So why had he saved me this time?

It’s either my entire heart and soul, or nothing at all.

The memory of his intense gaze, of those searing green eyes locked onto me, makes me flush as I head to the nearest Underground. Don’t be ridiculous, I scold myself. He wasn’t talking about you.