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The corner of his mouth twitches, shaping into arrogance. I’m still half in his arms and the heat of his fingers bleeds through my dress. “Admit it: it’s a brilliant trick. Commission eight fox masks, give them to glamoured entertainers, and no one pays attention to anything else.”
“And you have to look like—that?”
He reaches up and nips off a tiny rosebud from the curling vines. “My true love wouldn’t mind if I look like somebeastie. The Balican Seer described a vision of my mask and I thought it was perfect. Provocative. Besides, everyone’s having fun without me, and I can just wait for eleven o’clock…if your foretellings are to be trusted.”
Bristling, I inhale deeply before my pride makes me say something foolish. I won’t be ruining weeks of planning at the last minute. “Have fun. I’m heading back to my tower.” I pick up my skirts, lest I trip on them again, and hope the path over my shoulder leads to the maze exit.
“No retort? You usually love having the last word.”
I know Cyrus is baiting me, but he’s too pleased with himself. “Looking for a fight?” I step into his space, wearing the smirk he so covets. “You always are, despite your act. What’s atrickbut alieby a different name? The truth is, you like being a little devious, a little wolfish—a little likeme.”
“I’m nothing like you.”
“You’re right.Idon’t pretend to be better than I am.” The difference in his behavior was never clearer than in those thirty seconds when he thought I was someone else.
He tilts his head. His crystal horns glitter. We circle each other in the smallest steps, the one dance we share.
“You hate me,” Cyrus says.
“I don’t hate you. It takes too much effort. But someone should.”
“Resent, then.”
I scoff. “If you want me to list all the reasons I resent you, grab another bottle of wine.”
“Are you afraid of me?”
I only laugh.
His breath leaves the barest fog in the night. “You once asked what I’m afraid of when it comes to you. It would be the same reason you should be afraid of me. We could ruin each other, and we would not hesitate to do so.”
“Is that a threat?”
Cyrus smiles. I can’t decipher anything else with the rest of him hidden behind his beastly face.
“I am not afraid of you,” I whisper, a distant thudding in my ears.
“We can’t work together as king and Seer if we’re not honest with each other.”
I yank off my gloves. “If you really want to be honest—”
Cyrus tries to pull away, but I’m quicker. I snatch his hands, spilling his goblet, and his threads spool into my mind.
Taut at the forefront of his thoughts, a thread pulses with the anger of an old wound. A familiar scene blooms, one I remember through my own eyes.
He still thinks about that day, a lifetime ago. Only in his mind, the memory goes like this:
A girl comes from out of nowhere, pulling him away from certain death like a blessing from the Fates. A dirty, lovely thing. A miracle.
He brings the girl home to his hungry father and his hungry court. They place her in a tower, whisper promises that sate her own hunger.
He watches her become everything anathema to him.
He hates what she becomes, silver-tongued and sly.
He hates everyone else more for making her that way.
My lips part in question as Cyrus frees himself. I wantto laugh. “Don’t tell me you’re still wondering where the girl who saved you went.” I mean to coat the whisper with venom, with a sneer, but I’m half-incredulous. “No one forced me to be like this. I was desperate to get off the streets. I used you to claim that tower—that’s all it was.”
