Page 45

He’s merely trying to get under my skin—because he enjoys that, apparently.

“Still on that, are we?” Anton asks, rubbing his neck.

Then he straightens, picking something invisible off his jerkin.

“Despite what you might think, I find no sport in trampling on hearts, Vasalie. Hearts are fragile things, like glass. They break far too easily in the wrong hands. Offer them only to someone who can care for them, who might polish them until they glow.” He laughs a little.

“Now that should be made into a serenade, no?”

He mimes a chef ‘s kiss.

I resist a scoff, wrapping my arms around myself instead as his words sink into me in ways I wish they wouldn’t.

I wish my heart was more like Anton’s sea glass. Harder, stronger, less breakable. But as I see Copelan pulling Esmée into his embrace before the still-cheering audience, I still feel a pang of loss, even knowing the root of those feelings.

Because I did let Copelan borrow it. Not for long, but long enough that he left a bruise. I told him the truth of who I am. My childhood, things I hadn’t let myself think about in far too long. And he’d listened.

Maybe it isn’t losing Copelan that bothers me so much as losing his comfort or the ability to feel powerful in his grasp.

Perhaps we were just using each other.

I was a replacement for Esmée. He was a rock when I needed to stand. Arms, when I felt lonely, when I so desperately needed to be touched. But it doesn’t make it easier, because he saw me for all my weaknesses and still he chose someone else. Someone better than I am.

“It’s just that I felt something I hadn’t felt in . . . forever, maybe.” Not love, but certainly something better than pain. “It was small and insignificant, but there, and now I feel . . .” I tighten my fists. “Ashamed.”

I’m a fool to have allowed it. I knew the reason I was here, yet even after I rejected him, I clung to him. And now, I’m a fool to be standing here, spilling something so private, so embarrassing, to a king, no less.

I’m a fool to let my ruined soul feel at all.

I slouch against the trunk of the tree, hands curling into the bark. Copelan and Esmée parade around, smiling, greeting guests.

Anton paces in front of me, blocking my view. My lips part, but he plants an arm over my head, leaning so close we share breath. “If you think he’s the only one who can make you feel,” he murmurs, his lips against the shell of my ear, “you are so very wrong.”

His words steal the air from my lungs.

I expect him to move away. Instead, he takes an errant curl, spiraling it with his fingers before tucking it behind my ear.

Heat whisks over me, leaving me feeling intoxicated, dizzy—and more so by the way those deep, sea-green eyes hold mine in a terrifying, exhilarating grip.

I glimpse it again, that otherworldliness.

It’s in the way his gaze seems to shine, even in the shadows, like the sheen of a pearl.

I press a hand to his chest. And whether it’s to shove him away or pull him closer, I don’t find out, because Copelan shoulders through the willow’s branches.

He halts at the sight of us.

Anton doesn’t bother to acknowledge him, instead lowering his voice so only I can hear. “I came to find you because we have much to discuss regarding my so-called brother. Come to me later. Use the tunnels.”

“Vas?” Copelan says. His voice is strangely thick.

Anton backs off—slowly. When he turns to Copelan, his lips peel back in an insufferable, knowing smirk. “Spectacular performance, Master Reveler. Vasalie and I admired it oh so much.”

A torrent of heat floods my cheeks and, no surprise, I want to shove Anton yet again, Crown or not. He knows very well what he’s doing.

Copelan’s eyes slide to mine, and I want to be anywhere but here.

“Well.” Anton straightens his lapels, as if his work here is done. “You two enjoy the rest of your evening. Vasalie, it has been a pleasure, as always.” He strolls off casually, whistling, like he hadn’t just erupted something inside me.

“Souls below, Vasalie. What was that ?”

The branches still quaver from Anton’s departure. I stare at them, unable to form words. Not when his scent lingers in the air, trapped between the leaves; not when the taste of his breath still hovers atop my lips.

“It was nothing,” I finally hear myself respond.

“Nothing?” he asks. “That didn’t look like nothing.”

“We watched your performance together. That’s all.”

“You shouldn’t involve yourself with a Crown, Vas. Haven’t you figured that out by now?”

Aggravation swarms under my skin at that. I know what he’s doing, yet he has the gall to compare me to Esmée—especially after what I just saw. “What are you accusing me of, exactly?”

“I . . .” He lets out a weary sigh. “Seeing you two, it was unexpected. And it just looked like—souls, I don’t know. He looked like he wanted to carry you off. Or devour you.”

Like you look at Esmée, I want to say. But once again, I suppress the anger building inside me. “He is a Crown. He may look at me however he wants.” Another truth. “I’d have thought you’d be relieved.”

It’s my turn to deprive him of words, it seems. He threads a hand through his mussed locks—that all-too-familiar gesture. Paint slathers across his bare chest, though it’s beginning to crack. Just like me.

Our stalemate lasts for several seconds until, finally, he curses.

“I didn’t expect any of this, all right?

I was an overseer. A soloist. But then you came and changed everything.

And when you’re around . . . I don’t know.

I become someone else when I’m with you.

But trouble seems to follow you wherever you go.

You’re like a cyclone. Reckless, dangerous.

Dragging me in. And Esmée—” He grimaces, cutting himself off.

“She’s safe, and whole,” I finish for him. I press my hands to my stomach, feeling my nausea swell. It’s everything I can do to keep from vomiting on my feet.

“That’s . . . not true, exactly,” Copelan says, grappling with himself. “I didn’t expect to see her again, and then she came back, and I can’t just . . . I can’t turn off the way I feel. For you, for her . . .”

If you think he’s the only one who can make you feel, you are so very wrong.

All of this . . . it’s so irrevocably foolish. I don’t have to stand here. I don’t have to hear this. And in the grand scheme of things, it matters so, so little.

My conflict isn’t with Copelan. It’s with Illian, and my father.

I had forgotten that tonight, in the rush of emotions.

They are the ones who took everything from me.

My title, my passion. Years of my life I’ll never get back.

Years that punished my body in ways I can’t undo.

My friends. Laurent, Copelan, and whoever I look at next, they will be taken, too.

And Anton . . . I flex my fingers.

I will never have anything for myself, not until I am cut free from Illian’s noose. And after what I witnessed in his room—the girl, the way he had her dressed like me—I am coming to realize something else, too.

Illian will not keep his promise to me. He is not going to let me go.

Not unless I do something about it.

Copelan stares at me, awaiting a response.

I slip around him and push through the trees, disappearing into the night beyond.