Page 175

“You knew.” Her voice came out quiet.

Quiet from Liv was worse than screaming. She stood slowly, one hand pressed to her neck, the other curling into a fist at her side. Her cheeks were wet. her hair tangled from balcony wind. My shirt hung on her body, soft and revealing in a way I no longer had any right to want.

Her mark glowed beneath her fingers.

I had imagined this moment, naturally. I was arrogant enough to imagine every outcome and still miss the one where she stared at me as if I had stolen something sacred from her and dared to call it love.

Her fingers trembled at her side. “How long?”

My throat tightened. “The night you delivered the flowers.”

The color drained from her face in stages, slow and brutal, as if each second carried its own fresh little betrayal. Her hand drifted back to the mark beneath her jaw.

I didn’t move.

“You knew this whole time,” she said, each word harder than the last, “and you hid it from me.”

I nodded.

“All this time,” she whispered. “You knew I was your mate . . .” Her voice came out shredded. “The ward. The rose. The apartment. The cameras. The books. The coffee. The whole assassin thing.” She pressed her lips together, but tears spilled out anyway. “God, Lux. You built an entire relationship out of surveillance footage and plausible deniability.”

“I thought—I was giving you a choice,” I said, stumbling over my words.

Her eyes flashed. “No. You were giving yourself control.”

I went still.

“You decided what I got to know,” she said. “Which version of yourself I was allowed to see, to want. You made the assassin safe and Lux Draven untouchable because the demon lord was too dangerous. You split yourself in half and handed me the piece you thought I might tolerate. The peace you thought I could love.”

She touched the mark again, and the sight gutted me. My mark on her skin. “This should have been mine,” she said. Her voice shook, but she kept going. “Do you understand that? I waited my whole life for this and pretended I didn’t want it. I acted as if being mateless didn’t split me open every time someone else was chosen, and I told myself I was fine, because the alternative was humiliating.”

My chest tightened until breathing became work.

“I wanted to be chosen,” she said. “And I hated every stupid, hungry piece of me that hoped someone would see me one day and just know that I was their person.”

Her eyes filled again, but the tears didn’t soften her. They sharpened her.

“And then it happened, and you stole it from me.” Her hand shook against her throat. “It happened, and you knew before I did. You had proof on your body, and you let me believe I was broken. You let me cry about wanting my mate while he sat beside me, lying to my face.”

She dragged in a breath, her shoulders trembling once before she forced them steady. “You stole the happiest day of my life.”

A deep tremor rolled under the floor and climbed the walls. The windows shuddered in their frames. The chandelier above the sitting area chimed once, crystal rattling against crystal. Somewhere deeper in the tower, ancient wards groaned awake, in recognition . . . of her.

Liv didn’t seem to notice. She stood in the center of my bedroom, barefoot and shaking, grief burning under her skin, the most heavily warded building in New Abaddon trembling because she was angry.

Vale had asked how strong she was.

Here was the answer, humming through glass and stone and every old secret buried in the foundation. She was stronger than anyone in this city . . .

Including me.

Her breath hitched, and the tremor faded with it. The tower settled slowly, almost reluctantly, as if it had leaned toward her.

I had taken cities, power, and lives, but I never considered myself a thief, which only proved I lacked imagination. There were always fresh ways to become worse.

“I wanted you to have a version of me you could walk away from,” I said.

Her mouth twisted. “You wanted a version of rejection you could survive.”