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He cups my head, bringing my gaze back to his, and something about the gesture is irrevocably tender. A need shivers through me—one I don’t even fully understand.

“May I kiss you for real this time, Minnow?” he whispers, tucking a spiral of hair behind my ear with his free hand.

We shouldn’t, I think.

Please, I think.

I twist my hands into his tunic and nod, only when I glance up, he doesn’t move.

“Well?” I prompt, at last.

“I’m not going to do it when you’re expecting it.”

“Menace,” I say. I yank him toward me—

He presses his lips onto mine.

If there was a game between us, it vanishes. I tug him closer, as if I could burrow inside him, and then he’s challenging my force with his own, his other hand pressing against the small of my back. And all I can think of is desire. Desire, to be closer, to—

His arms come underneath me, and then he’s sweeping inside, situating me on the dresser beside the door. His hands grip it on either side of my legs.

I feel so small, so engulfed. Liquid, from my head to my toes.

My eyes fall shut, and though he isn’t touching me right now, I feel him everywhere. In my lungs, in my bones. In my pulse.

He removes my cloak. Lets it fall around my hips. Underneath, I am wearing only a simple black dress with a neckline that scoops down far too low.

His knuckles glide along the arc of my neck.

I release a breath.

He swallows it, his mouth on mine once more. He smells like the zest of an orange, the salt of the isle, a scent that lingers even on his lips. I bring my hands to his chest, splay my fingers across it.

He releases a long-suffering groan. “Vasalie, please, spare me and pull away before I lose myself and carry you to bed.”

I should do just that. But this is a moment we might never have again, and try as I might, I can’t back away. So what if I am selfish, just this once?

I can’t put words to what I want from him right now. I just know I want . . . more.

I shake my head, my fingers twining around his neck. His breath shudders, and in return, a hand flirts with the hem of my dress. He watches me for any hint of discomfort, then his palm travels up and over my thigh, and farther still, to curve around my hip.

Once more, I am intoxicated. And more so, when he slides my sleeve down with his other hand, his lips kissing a path along my neck. I tangle my fingers into his hair.

The air changes, like an updraft in the summer, simmering with heat.

The lacing on the back of my dress is simple.

He looses the ribbons with ease.

Cool air grazes my shoulders, my back, and then I am in his arms.

He brings me to the bed, just like he said he would.

There, he eases us down until he’s sitting, his back against the headboard. His mouth never leaves mine as he gathers me up toward his chest, his arm underneath my knees. My skin is glossed with a light sheen of sweat. I could melt, here. I think I already am, and I am okay with that.

He pauses once more. Looks between my eyes, his breathing as ragged as my own.

I am frightened—but only of the way I feel.

With an arm keeping me tucked, he turns us, rolls us around until he settles me beneath him, his weight a pleasant thing. My eyes fall shut. I am nothing but sensation and coiled, frenzied nerves as he sets a palm underneath my knee, drags it up—

“Your Majesty,” comes a voice just outside.

We freeze, but neither of us speaks. My heart feels as if it might fly from my chest.

Whoever is outside the door knocks twice, then again . . .

Anton squeezes his eyes shut for a moment before dragging a quilt over, wrapping it around me so I am covered in full. “What is it, Basile?”

The door cracks open. “Your presence is requested in the studio, Sire.”

“I will be there shortly,” Anton says.

“I recommend now, Sire.”

“You have the absolute worst timing, Basile.”

“It is a new development, Sire, which you demanded I inform you of should it come to”—

Basile glances at me, unreadable—“fruition.”

Development?

A slight groan slips from Anton’s lips. Once more, he cups my face. “Vasalie, I—”

A very prominent clearing of the throat jolts us both, and Anton finally pulls away. “Basile, in this moment, I do not like you very much.”

“I know, Sire.”

Anton groans as Basile lopes off, leaving us alone.

“We will talk soon,” Anton says apologetically, after giving himself a moment. “I’ll send someone to deliver your gown within the hour.”

Dazed as I am, he leads me back to the workshop where Gustav and Laurent are. Gustav follows him away, the two of them shoving each other playfully before disappearing around the bend. Laurent, grinning knowingly, offers to escort me out.

But he pauses, sensing the tumult within me.

I almost lost myself, just now, with Anton. And it leaves me both exhilarated and terrified—of what the future looks like when I have to forget him, when I must move on from all that’s happened these past several weeks.

That assumes we make it out of this mess, what with my father, and Illian . . .

“It’s going to be all right, sweet,” Laurent says.

“I hope you’re right.”

Laurent snuffs the lantern. I pivot to follow but pause at the sheaf of moonlight falling across the desk. Or rather, the ring glinting at me like a winking eye.

His signet ring.

“Anton isn’t wearing his ring,” I note, unable to look away.

Crowns always wear them. Illian never let his leave his hand.

“He prefers not to wear it when he’s in his studio.”

But I can’t focus on Laurent’s words, because my mind is elsewhere, hung on the edge of a memory.

The banquet.

I replay the night in my head. I had always felt like I’d forgotten something. Missed something. So I allow the memories to resurface, one by one.

Gustav’s legs buckling beneath him.

Anton rushing over. Shouting for water. A physician.

A servant ambling forward, a glass in hand.

Except he spills it. And so he bends, wiping his rag . . .

The rag. What am I forgetting? I shake my head, trying to clear the murk from my mind. The poison had begun working by that time. But if I could just—

Eyes, sliding intently toward mine.

A smirk on knowing lips.

The servant. I had recognized him from Illian’s court. And Anton—he had been wearing his ring that night. I remember seeing it, remember the cold of it against my hand.

The servant had a small box. Not a ring box, but . . .

I approach the desk, considering the ring, and that’s when I see it. A small block of red, unmelted wax.

It wasn’t a box in the servant’s hands. It was wax.

“The banquet,” I breathe. “The poison, it wasn’t just to harm Gustav. I think—I think it was a distraction while someone duplicated Anton’s seal.”

Laurent relights the lantern and paces over.

“Illian,” I say, the pieces snapping together. “He was composing letters using a seal that wasn’t his.” I remember it clearly, the first time I found the tunnels. I hadn’t thought much of it, but now . . . “I think he is writing in Anton’s hand.”

Apprehension accompanies me on my journey back through the tunnels.

Once more, I try to align the pieces of Illian’s crooked puzzle, fit the discordant notes into some kind of rhythm I can follow, but I can’t make sense of who he would be writing to in Anton’s hand or what good it would do here when any misconstruction could easily be exposed by Anton himself?

Laurent promised to warn Anton, but even so, I feel as if each passing second is a stride toward King Rurik’s death and a dangerous, inevitable war. I can’t understand why Anton is waiting, why he needs so much time. I should have asked him when I had the chance.

But instead, I had kissed him.

I groan and bat a flurry of dust from my face, then yank open the cellar door, registering too late the light bleeding from the other side. The moment I step through, a rough grip seizes my arm.

Then I’m dragged directly into a column of light.