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Cyrus hesitates. In the space of that held breath, I imagine every thread that might unravel from this moment; somany are at his disposal to choose. The boy who was born with everything meets my gaze.
“You,” he utters, no deflection, no adornment.
I swallow, overconscious of the sound it makes. I’m being too obvious when I turn away from Cyrus, moving toward the hearth in the hope of finding something to occupy my hands. Borrowed tomes and dirty dishes litter the table under the open window. I’ve cleaned up little in the past weeks; the dress I wore to the ball is still bunched in a corner, faded of magic and melted into kitchen rags.
“Violet.”
“I don’t forgive you for trying to push me out,” I snap, staring through him.
“I know.”
“Whatever you’re doing here—it’s an act.”
“If that’s what you believe.”
A shiver runs through my bones as Cyrus nears. He isn’t fighting back and it throws me off-balance, my tongue tripping over retorts I don’t have the opportunity to say. He smells faintly of the river; he used to like to spend his afternoons swimming, and I’m close enough to see the damp under his collar.
My hands curl into his shirt. “You can’t seduce me.”
“I think I already have.”
Cyrus lowers his head past my lips and presses his mouth to my neck, dipping down into the valley of my collarbone. Any hold I have on him is useless. If I could breathe, I would curse; it shouldn’t be so easy for him, I shouldn’tmakeit so easy for him—
“You’re getting married,” I manage to say before I lose all thought.
“So?”
“So?What about the prophecy? What about—Cyrus.”
“I have a bride.” His lips move below my ear. “But I want you.”
I grip him by his hair and think to pull him off but something roughens in his throat that makes me want to keep him there. “I amSeer.I will not be yourmistress.”
“Do you expect to be queen?”
An inane laugh bubbles out. I don’t expect this tocontinue.I can’t follow who Cyrus is anymore—the resentful boy I once knew, or the sly brat who has me in his arms.
As I’m about to retort, my stomach lurches: I’m crushed to him as he lifts me off the floor. Next thing I know, he’s carrying me to the sofa.
He pulls me astride, my skirts rucked over my knees, the velvet cushions sinking beneath us. Doesn’t push for more—yet. Even that’s probably premeditated. He only kisses me lightly, like a question. A little condescendingly, if I’m being honest, overtly aware that he’s done this more than I have and I’m at every disadvantage.
So I make him clumsy. Wriggling from his touch as his hands test where they should be, dodging his mouth until I catch his chin and kiss him myself. I feel him smile—impossible not to with my bottom lip in his possession.
Cyrus turns to kiss my injured palm, lingering on that still-gleaming slice of a scar, deliberate in its depth and angle. “Was this from the beast, too?”
The thorn borne from my blood is hidden in a cabinet not ten paces away. In a different thread, I’d be driving it into his heart this instant. It’d be so easy with him pinned down, distracted by the rest of me. He’d never see it coming.
I swallow. “I was careless with a knife” is the half-truth I offer him.
He doesn’t notice my lie. Instead, his fingers slink behind my neck, the small intimacy treacherous in more ways than I understand right now, the kind that unspools new threads in the future.
Every rational thought shouts at me to stop. Princes don’t dabble with witches on the side. What will happen when someone finds out? Bedroom mistakes are always the fastest to rear their ugly, wart-chinned heads. I read the papers;Lacy Thingsgets delivered to my window every other morning with a whole column of scandals next to the birth-constellation analyses. Cyrus and I wouldn’t just be a headline. We’d be the cautionary tale in history books.
But when he pulls me in and I meet him with a kiss that steals the gasp from his throat, I can’t resist having this power over him.
I shove him down on the sofa with a knee, and he sprawls upon the cushions at my mercy, a slyness crooking his lips. He plays with the tail end of my braid dangling between us—and yanks it so I topple onto him. “No promises,” he says.
My heart is racing, my body hot. Our feelings can’t be removed from the roles we have in the palace, which is why on any day, he’d rather see me humbled than kiss me goodnight. But I don’t need his trust or devotion. Our attractionis simple: we both think we’re one step ahead and we have to prove the other wrong. I want himbecauseI don’t trust him.
