She narrowed her eyes. “It wasn’t that long ago that you were kissing me—in this room.”

“Shut up,” James said dispassionately. “I am not an idiot, though I suppose I might as well have been, for some years now. I ought to just call for the Silent Brothers. They can determine what should be done with you. But I wanted to give you the opportunity to explain yourself.”

“You’re curious.” He could see her determining the price of his questions, her answers. It filled him with rage. He knew he ought to summon the Clave, the Brothers, but his need for the truth overrode everything else. She would tell him what he only half guessed at now—what he dreaded, and needed, to know.

“Not curious enough to put up with you toying with me,” said James. “Did you know what the bracelet did? Have you always known?”

Her lips parted in surprise. “How do you—”

“Did it just make me think I loved you, or did it do more than that?” James said, and saw by her expression that his question had hit its target. There was no pleasure in having guessed correctly; he felt physically sick. “What did it do to me?”

“There is no point shouting,” she said, rather primly. “I’ll tell you all of it—God knows there’s no point protecting anyone now.” She gazed past him, at the dark window. “After Jesse died, my mother took me into Brocelind at night.”

“This,” he said, “had better be relevant.”

“It is. There was someone there—a man in a cloak, I couldn’t see his face—who gave me what my mother called a ‘gift.’ The ability to make men do as I said and feel what I wished them to feel. When I use the power, men give me what I want—from a glass of wine to a kiss to a marriage proposal.” She shifted her gaze to him. “But oh, the irony. It didn’t work on you. I tried everything. You resisted all of it. My mother was furious, never more so than when you came back from Cirenworth to Idris and I told her you had fallen in love with Cordelia.”

“I was fourteen—”

“Old enough for puppy love,” said Grace, without sentiment. “All you would talk about was Cordelia. How she talked, how she walked, how she read to you when you were ill. The color of her eyes, her hair. My mother was desperate. She went to him, the one from the forest. He gave her the bracelet. It would counteract the effect of your demonic grandfather’s blood in your veins, she said. And it did. From the moment you put it on, you forgot Cordelia. You believed that you loved me.”