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I swallowed. “Thing?”

“I don’t know how to explain it. But I had never wanted anyone more than I wanted you, and once I had you, I had to keep having you. Again, and again, and again. It became a need, an insatiable desire. I don’t know what you did to me.”

Heat.

Panic.

I went for my glass of water and took a sip to cool off. This conversation had gotten away from me already, and we hadn’t even started. “Right,” I said, setting the drink down. “Well… uh, we should probably never talk about that again because, uh, that’s not what we should be talking about.”

Lucien’s eyebrows arched slightly. “A solid sentence. Made perfect sense.”

“Whatever. Let’s talk about what we should be talking about.”

“Which is?”

“The two elephants currently not in the room. We know they’re going to find us. Do you have a plan on how to make them… not find us?”

He shook his head. “I don’t.”

“Do you have a plan for getting us away from your father at all?”

“It’s… not as easy as that.”

“What if we just left this restaurant, grabbed a car, and left the city?”

“Beatrice—”

“—Lucien, I can’t go back to that house. I won’t be a prisoner again.”

“I don’t want you to be a prisoner.”

“Then help me get away, like you said you would.”

“I will.”

“When?”

“Look,” he paused, took a deep breath, and sighed. “My father wants us to do this for him. He wants the crown.”

“And?”

“I think we should get it for him.”

My eyes narrowed. “Why should we do that? You saw what he did the last time he came into possession of a magical artifact. For all you know that crown will be the vehicle for his next murder spree.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Lucien, you can’t be serious… he wants us to break into a Recondite temple and steal a piece of magical hardware for him—an artifact that we have no idea what it does, and have taken it at face value that it once belonged to your family. I don’t think he expects either of us to come back; definitely not me.”

“He needs you.”

“For now. What if that crown somehow allows him to get into my family vault? By getting it for him, we’re giving him another way to get what he wants, and then he doesn’t need me anymore. Are you going to stop him from killing me?”

Lucien’s eyes darkened. He glanced at the door.

“Look at me,” I said.

He gave me his attention again. “I won’t let him hurt you,” he said.