“You would be surprised what all I know, Céline.” Valentine smiled coldly. As always, he was dressed in all black, which made his white-blond hair seem to glow with pale fire. Céline supposed that by objective standards, Valentine was just as handsome as Stephen, but it was impossible to think of him that way. He was handsome the way a statue was handsome: perfectly sculpted, unyielding as stone. Sometimes at the Academy, Céline would watch him with Jocelyn, wondering at the way a single touch from her could melt his ice. Once Céline had come upon them in an embrace and had watched from the shadows as they lost themselves in each other. When they broke from the kiss, Valentine had raised a hand to Jocelyn’s cheek in an impossibly tender touch, and his expression, as he gazed at his first and only love, was almost human.

There was no trace of that in him now. He opened his arms wide, as if welcoming her to make herself at home in the opulent living room. The cage at the center was empty, except for a smoldering pile of black lace and leather. Dominique du Froid was gone.

Valentine followed her gaze.

“She was a criminal,” he said. “I simply expedited the inevitable sentence.”

There were rumors about Valentine, about the change that had come over him when his father was killed. Dark whispers about the cruelties he carried out not just on trespassing Downworlders but on anyone who crossed him. Anyone who questioned him.

“You look worried, Céline. Even … afraid.”

“No,” she said quickly.

“It’s almost as if you think breaking into my apartment to spy on me might draw some kind of nasty consequence.”

“I wasn’t spying, I was just—”

He favored her with a smile then, so warm, so sunny, that she felt ridiculous for having been so afraid. “Would you settle for tea? And maybe some biscuits. You look like you haven’t eaten in a year.”

He set out a bounty: not just tea and biscuits but a sliced baguette, fresh chèvre and a small pot of honey, and a bowl of blueberries that tasted like they’d just been plucked from the branch. Céline hadn’t known she was hungry until the taste of honey hit her tongue. She realized she was ravenous.

They made polite Paris small talk: their favorite cafés, their preferred picnic spots, the best crepe stand, the relative merits of the Orsay and the Pompidou. Then Valentine took a hearty bite of cheese-smeared baguette and said, almost cheerfully, “You know, of course, that the others think you’re weak and not particularly bright.”

Céline almost choked on a blueberry.

“If it were up to most of the Circle, you wouldn’t be in it. Fortunately, this isn’t a democracy. They think they know you, Céline, but they don’t know the half of it, do they?”