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He’s dead. Crushed, his face an unrecognizable pulp.

Talan stands, blood dripping from his leather gloves, and turns to face the rest of the King’s Watch.

He hasn’t even looked at me.

“You all know who I am.” His voice is low and quiet, his fury barely restrained. “I’ll be counting to twenty. Anyone still here will find himself wrapped in everlasting nightmares, screaming and begging for death until I slit his throat. Anyone who breathes a word of this to the king will meet a worse fate.”

They drop their swords to the ground.

“One,” says Talan, his voice smooth. “Two…”

The men of the King’s Watch run, stumbling in their desperation to escape.

Talan’s glacial eyes root me in place. He’s taking in the blood, the carnage. “Are you hurt?” Steel laces his tone.

I glance down at myself, at the blood soaking my clothes. My thigh still aches, but the wound is already healing itself—Nimuë and Morgan’s magic at work, I assume. “It’s nothing serious,” I say.

A muscle tics in his jaw, a small movement, but it tells me everything. “Good.” But it’s not good at all the way he says it. It’s cutting and cruel, like the edge of his sword. “Would have been a bit embarrassing, letting mywifeget hurt.”

I swallow. Venom drips from the wordwife, and it hits me harder than I would have expected.

His gaze slides to the vines clinging to the rocks. Calmly, he rips one of them off. My heart races as I start to realize what it’s for.

My heart kicks into gear again. He’s going to tie me up, isn’t he? Then I die. Of course, whywouldn’the kill me?

His gaze flicks back to me, all ice. There’s no warmth to him anymore, just an unyielding darkness.

“Now,Nia Vaillancourt,” he says in a low voice. “Who the fuck are you, really?”

My brain does what it always does in moments like this, tries to calculate what he wants so I can give it to him. It sorts through survival strategies. Can I talk my way out of this? Can lies save me? Is it too late to charm him?

Is he going to kill me?

But none of my calculations are adding up, and I feel like my brain is breaking.

So, I do the one thing you should never do with a lethal hunter.

I run.

CHAPTER 40

It doesn’t take long.

He corners me in the forest, blocking my path just like he did the day we first met.

And just like that day, the shadows seem to darken the air around him. The sight of him steals my breath, the beauty and the terror of him as overwhelming as ever.

His eyes lock on me, cold and certain. “You’re not getting away, not without answering my questions. I recognize the feel of your mind, but I can’t read your thoughts.I’mnot a telepath. So, you’re going to do something new for you and actually tell me the truth.”

I take a step back, eyeing Talan warily. My fingers twitch, and my legs are still shaking, giving me away. My whole body is charged with panic and something more corrosive. Heartbreak, maybe.

Months of deception have made lying second nature, and my mind offers up a whole garden of falsehoods, pretty little blossoms of deceit waiting to be plucked. Should I offer him another rotten bloom while I hide a knife behind my back?

The question is which lie to pick…

Am I a scared farm girl blackmailed by enemies? An agent conspiring with Fey nobles to put him on the throne? Am I a wide-eyed innocent, a blank slate? An idiot?

Maybe a politician’s trick—I could just lie, lie, lie, flood him with lies until he’s too exhausted to bother with the truth.