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One last moment to lie – as one half of the hall broke out in furious objections to his language and the other half cheered and laughed – to pull an indignant face and tell him I wouldnever,and did I really look like the kind of girl who would throw her honour away like that?

But I was not lying about Creon again.

I’d sworn I would never lie about Creon again.

‘You make it sound like a crime, Halbert,’ I heard myself say, and somehow my voice was still bright and clear over the roar of the audience, my words carried swiftly to the back of the hall by dozens of eager whispers. ‘You do realise it’s a rather common activity between adults in love, don’t you?’

One moment of baffled silence.

On the left side of the stage, Rosalind closed her eyes.

And then the howls and the shouts were back, louder than ever before – clamouring for the meeting to end, for Rosalind to take back her vote, for me to be thrown out of the city. There were other voices in there, too, arguing stubbornly that my private choices really didn’t matter as much as my ability to do away with the fae empire … but they were few and far between and not nearly as brash as Halbert’s zealous supporters.

I wondered, with a pang of vicious scepticism, if he’d paid for them to be here and shout.

‘Well,’ Norris said, glancing around somewhat nervously. ‘I do suppose that changes things, if …’

A defeat – but gods help me, somehow my heart refused to feel defeated. A brand new fight came bubbling up in my chest as I stood there, scorn and fury raining down around me; it rose with a stubborn spite that surprised me as much as anyone, a resolve I hadn’t known I possessed. Damn them, but I would not slink out of this hall like a beaten old dog, tail between my legs. I would not show shame forloving.

‘Changes things?’ I said coolly, and the noise died down a little – even the most vehement of onlookers too curious to miss a single word. ‘Why? Because I’m prepared to be honest with you? Would you have preferred for me to lie?’

‘We would have preferred you not to be spreading your legs for a man with human blood on his hands,’ Halbert cut in, rising from his seat with a swagger that drew a new round of cheers from the audience. He was clearly starting to enjoy himself. ‘We would have preferred for you to possess a modicum of self-respect, rather than—’

‘That’senough,’ Rosalind burst out.

Be it from shock or obedience, the hall instantaneously fell silent again.

‘This is beyond the pale even foryou,’ she spat, rising to her feet as well – a head and a half shorter than Halbert, but the cold fire burning in those sharp blue eyes made up for every inch of it. ‘You’re supposed to be a consul of the White City, not some lecherous gossip milking matters of life and death for scandal!’

‘And you,’ Halbert returned, still smiling gleefully, ‘are equally supposed to be a consul of the White City, rather than a champion of little fae whores without a grain of—’

She moved so fast I didn’t even see it coming.

Three, four steps. A blur of white as her arm swung up, and then thesmackof her palm against his cheek, reverberating through the stunned hall like a thunderclap, drawing startled gasps from the audience around us. I cried out in wordless shock. On the edge of my sight, Delwin was reaching for his sword.

‘Rosalind!’ Norris panted, jerking back in his chair as if she might be coming for him next.

She didn’t seem to hear any of us.

‘Don’t youdare.’ Her voice had gone low and hoarse, the words spat into Halbert’s face as he dazedly prodded his reddening cheek. Her hands had balled into white-knuckled fists. ‘Don’t you dare call my daughter a fae whoreever again, you fuckingswine.’

The world stuttered.

Stiffened.

Or perhaps it was my own mind grinding to a crawl, too paralysed to absorb the gasps and gulps around me, too paralysed to string two thoughts of sense together.

Daughter.

Had she really just said …daughter?

But then—

Then—

‘What?’ I heard myself say.

‘What?’ Halbert said in the same moment.