I whirl on them. “You really shouldn’t, considering he’s still—by blood and birth—your prince. And I’m not sure about you, but I enjoy keeping my head attached to my shoulders.”

The noblemen cough, their eyes skittering away from me abruptly. Queen Kolissa suddenly turns to Lucien, his father the king follows suit, and for a moment all three of them smile at one another. Lucien’s grin to his father is wide, warm, genuine. It’s a different smile from the one I’m used to—more wholesome, more free. In the same way Varia’s return has lit the king from the inside, so, too, has Varia’s return eased the loneliness in Lucien’s smile.

He looks so happy, and my unheart warms with it.

Lucien turns his gaze this way and that, searching the crowd. My stomach leaps and curdles at the same time as he lands on me.

His smile fades instantly.

But of course it does. It’s imaginary, and impossible, but something circuits between us—like a rope of flame burning back and forth and back again. For a moment, when his eyes meet mine, there’s something like relief in their inky depths, but almost instantly they cloud over into unreadable discs of black iron. His word from the clearing rings in my unheart.

Traitor.

I can see the break between us, the gulf in his eyes, the both of us standing on opposite sides. There is nothing I can do to close the gap. He won’t let me—or anyone else—see the hurt, but I know it’s there, the same way one knows beneath the lid of a cauldron boils a red-hot liquid. He keeps his noble mask taut and lacquered with pure, bristling pride. To the nobles, we’re still close. The last time we were both at court, the rumors swirled that the crown prince would choose me as his Spring Bride at the Hunt. In their eyes, right now he should offer me his hand.

And yet all he does is watch me for a moment before turning on his heel.

It’s a small movement. It shouldn’t hurt as much as it does, like a rusted spear to the chest. The nobles around us dissolve into frantic whispers.

“A disagreement?”

“Surely His Highness picked Lady Zera at the Hunt?”

“The murder might have shaken him—”

A murder has shaken him, I want to say. The murder of nine men whom I killed in front of him.

tore them apart easily, like rusted old puppets—