Chillsbane is a medicine. They’re talking about medicine? There’s a blur of lace as the girl hugs him tightly. He says something to her, too soft for me to hear, and then she minces back through the crowd and disappears inside the fleshhouse again. My first mistake was watching her go—when I turn back to Lucien, he’s gone, a gap in the crowd where darkness used to be. Everyone’s packed so tightly in this small avenue, and the heat of the day hasn’t gone anywhere with the setting sun. I sweat and swivel my head madly.

“New Gods’ tit,” I wipe my eyes and mutter, the crowd all looking the same. “It shouldn’t be this easy to lose someone that tall.”

“And yet you continually surprise us all by managing it somehow.”

I jump, the deep voice directly behind me as I whirl and come face-to-face with Lucien, his midnight eyes glaring out of his cowl with such brimstone, I almost stagger back. Say it, Zera. Say it now, before he can walk away or shut you out—

I gulp down muggy summer air. “Lucien, I’m sor—”

His eyes harden to stone (he learned that from Varia; I can see the similarities now) as his hand darts out and captures my wrist. “You’ll be useful. Come with me.”

I’m dreaming. I have to be. Except the warmth around my wrist is no phantasmal faceless man’s, it’s Lucien’s—attached to his arm, his broad shoulder, his strong neck as he leads me out through the crowd of Fleshhouse Avenue and into Butcher’s Alley. He’s touching me, willingly, when I never thought he would again. It’s simple and small and nothing and yet my body is singing with it. Our cloaks swirl behind us, streamers of blue and black as we bruise across the night.

“Where—” I sidestep a spouting watertell and the courier who rushes over to it. “Where are we going?”

The prince doesn’t say anything, his strides lengthening, and I have to jog to keep up. I should tear his hand off my wrist, but it feels so good to be touched. By anyone.

By him especially.

fool. there is no point. The hunger sneers. he will never trust you again. we are the predator and he is the prey—

“Lucien,” I start. “I want—I want to apologi—”

His other hand abruptly covers my mouth, and he pulls me down behind a line of crates. The feel of his smooth palm against my lips—I swallow hard. A wrongness consumes me, hot and uneasy. I’m the monster, and he’s the prince, and he knows that, he saw that, so why…?

I give a massive squirm, but he holds me fast, his arms tight around my body. My unheart clenches into itself, my skin buzzing like a wasp’s nest.