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There’s a note in her voice that makes me feel like a coward, and I don’t like it. I have to fight to keep my eyes on hers.
“You didn’t need to bother,” she continues, and her voice is very low, full of censure. “I’ve only ever seen you from a distance.” She hesitates. “This you, I mean.”
“I couldn’t take a chance.”
“Because it’s treason,” she snaps.
I say nothing. It is treason.
“And now what?” she says. “You grew bored with me? With your game?”
My thoughts flash on our last night in the forest, when she was so determined to play a role in a revolution—when she was so determined to get herself killed. She was fierce and reckless and passionate, and for one wild moment, I wanted to stand at her side and believe we had a chance at changing everything.
But of course I couldn’t. I can’t.
She can’t either. Especially not now.
Her heart is a steady thrum in her chest. I can feel it against mine. “I never grew bored with you, Tessa.” Then I frown, my eyes narrowing. “What’s your real name?”
She hesitates. “Tessa Cade.” She swallows. “It is my real name.”
I laugh, but there’s no humor to it. “Of course it is.”
“I’m sorry I’m not as good as you are at pretending to be someone else.” She hesitates, her eyes flicking to the door. “The king doesn’t even know, does he?”
I don’t answer, but I suppose that’s answer enough. I don’t like how easily she seems to see through me. She wrenches at the grip I have on her wrists, but I don’t give an inch. She finally stops, her eyes boring into mine. She lifts her chin boldly. “Fine. Get on with it, then.”
“Get on with it?”
“Whatever you’re going to do.” She’s so brave. It’s honestly astounding that she hasn’t gotten herself killed before now. “Prove your point. Break my bones. Cut my hands off. Set me on fire. Take your dagger and write your name in my—”
“This all sounds like it’s going to get rather messy.”
“Do it.”
“No.” I glance up at her hands, one of which is turning an alarming shade of pink. “I’ll ask again: If I let you go, can you agree not to strike at me?” She hesitates, so I add, “Most people don’t get a second offer. I definitely won’t give you a third.”
She blanches a little at that, and I watch the battle in her eyes as she wars with who I was and who I am.
“Fine,” she says, and her voice is breathy. “I won’t hit you.”
I release her hands and take a step back. I keep the chain and coil it around my hand. She stays pressed against the wall, but she’s rubbing one wrist.
Despiteall the defiance, she’s still afraid of me. I can read it in the set of her eyes and the way she clings to the wall, waiting for me to do one of the things she said. As Prince Corrick, I can’t fix that.
Again, I wish for masks, for darkness, for firelight and moonlit paths and everything we’ll never share together again.
Wishing solves nothing. I learned that the night my parents died.
“Are you hungry?” I say to her.
She looks startled, then suspicious, then resigned. “No.”
“I doubt that. You look like you haven’t eaten in a week.”
Her expression darkens. “It was hard to drum up an appetite when the King’s Justice executed my best friend.”
I’m used to having obscenities hurled at me, but her words hit me like the bolt from a crossbow, quick and painful, right through the chest. I have to glance away. I meant to protect her. I’m protecting her even now, and she looks at me like I dragged her out of the woods by her hair and strung her up on the gates myself.
