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“I’m always right.”
With the lantern on Cyrus, I can see him shift into his most charming, dimpled self. “If you can do me the favor of continuing to be Lady Raya, Nadiya, it would help me greatly. I promise we will find the witch and bring her to justice.”
I roll my eyes so hard that my whole head turns. “Anypromise he makes isn’t worth the air he breathes,” I tell her. I can’t stand that syrupy tone of his any longer.
“Violet, not the time—”
“Cyrus will do what’s best for Auveny. He has to,” I say to Nadiya, ignoring him. Let me at least give this girl the truth if she’s to flounder in our court; I won’t have another soul fawning over the prince for his supposed charity. “You will be surrounded by people who want to use you and blackmail you. If you stand between him and the throne, I wouldn’t bet on the prince staying true. Speaking as someone he would gladly banish for beinginconvenient.”
Cyrus glowers at me, while Dante raises a brow at him.
“We’ll discuss later,” Cyrus whispers, sighing, before returning to Nadiya with a fresh smile. “Violet’s situation is different. That wouldn’t have crossed my mind if I didn’t think she could take care of herself. She’d be fine anywhere she’d go—”
“Exactly the kind of compliment a girl wants to hear,” I mutter.“Strong enough for exile.”
“—and it doesn’t matter because I promise”—he places a hand on Nadiya’s arm—“I will not do anything that harms you.”
Not worth the air he breathes,I mouth at her.
If we argue any longer, Nadiya might wring a hole right through her gown. She looks terrified ofbothof us. “D-do I have to decide now?”
“No, no, of course not—” Cyrus starts.
“No, you don’t,” I say over him. “Go sleep on it and then go with the prince’s plan—technically Dante’s plan, which is how you know it’s decent. I won’t haunt you for it.”
In the background, Dante sighs. “Iwould like to go home and sleep. Look, let’s meet again. As in,tomorrow.I need to go through old correspondence, now that I know Raya’s manor is compromised.”
This ends up being our awkward parting. Cyrus and Dante exchange some private words, then Dante salutes his farewell, leaving for his apartment in the University District.
Cyrus leads Nadiya up the circling stairs around my tower. The north gate that I use every day is the closest entry to the palace. I march up after them feeling like a straggler.
When we reach the landing at my tower’s midpoint, Cyrus urges Nadiya to cross the bridge to the palace first. The lights of her lantern and fairies grow distant on the bridge, then it’s just me and the prince in the starlit dark. I hover by my tower’s entryway, hackles raised for his reproach.
Fiddling with his cuffs, he doesn’t quite meet my eyes. “Thank you,” he says, with the mildness he reserves for Rayas and Nadiyas and people who are not me. “I am…grateful for your help today. Even in the manner you chose to provide it.”
“When you run out of bigger problems, you’ll come after me again,” I scoff.
“You still are the biggest problem.” His tone is unkindly, but when he glances up, his gaze is unmarked by the caution I’m accustomed to. Lingering and rueful.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I matter to you.”
The space between his brows twitches into a furrow.Something like understanding filters through his expression. “Would that be so bad? You asked me to figure out what I want. What if what I want is you after all?”
A shiver passes through me, one that I can’t blame on the evening chill. “I wouldn’t believe you.”
“Of course not. You aren’t some easy mark. You care for no one but yourself, so you can never be played for a fool.”
I open my mouth to protest, but actually…“That’s right.”
“Ever so clever.” Cyrus smiles like he’s won something, and I bristle.
We’re more dangerous like this, bantering like we’re playing a game, open and forgetful of the damage we could do. As if Cyrus hasn’t spent all this time trying to be rid of me. As if I haven’t been tempted to skewer his heart more than once. As if we don’t shape the world with our very presence.
“Good night, Violet,” he says, looking at me in the way I told him not to.
