Varia had a fresh raw pig liver waiting for me, sequestered beneath the banquet dress in her room, but still the hunger keens. I try to remind it his death doesn’t mean our heart anymore, but the darkness unfurls whenever our skin brushes together, like it’s been trained to react with violent thoughts to his scent, his feel. The sound of the lawguards approaching crescendos beyond our hiding place, and I feel Lucien’s arms tighten around me, his mouth just near my ear. The feel of his breath on my skin chokes me more than the muggy summer air, making my whole body tremble.

“You’re shaking.” His tone is low, despondent. “How could you be so good at fooling the court yet so terrible at hiding your own feelings?”

He’s acting so incredibly different—so light, and amused, and unaffected. I’d seen him do this once before, to the other Spring Brides, the ones he treated kindly just for show, just to keep the court off his back. The farce is lifted, gone. He’s supposed to return to his life before me, before my facade. He’s never truly happy when he looks at me, and he deserves to be happy.

The red moonlight blazes off the lawguards’ armor as they pass us—clanking so incredibly loudly—and then disappear, fading behind a street corner. I arch my back against Lucien’s chest in a bid to make space between us.

“What feelings?” I ask.

“That is the question, isn’t it?” He releases me just enough that I can turn in his arms, and I spin to face him. “You never answered me in the clearing.”

“I told you—you’re naive,” I bark. “I deceived you—”

“Everyone I’ve ever met has deceived me,” he interrupts me. “That is what it means to be a d’Malvane. You deceived me. And I pitied you. In the end, I’d call that a draw, wouldn’t you?”

“We kissed,” I blurt, my mouth running by itself. “You and I—that kiss in the tent. Did that mean nothing to you?”

He leans in suddenly, smiling, a shadow filled with heat and draped in leather, his hands slipping onto either side of my face. It’s a farce. He treats people well only when he despises them; the Spring Brides proved that. I swear there’s a blink of genuine feeling in his eyes, but then it disappears.

“How can something that was a lie mean anything at all?”

Not like this. I want the real Lucien. Not this one.