Ven had seen the light of love burst into flame the first moment Evelina had set her blue eyes on Marcus. Well, maybe not love’s light. Knowing Evelina, it was most likely the light gleaming off Prince Marcus’s golden crown.

Ven pressed his hand over the wound to try to stop the bleeding.

That’s why she stabbed me, he reflected. She was afraid I would tell Marcus the truth about her, that she was not the poor, mistreated victim of my brutal advances. That she deliberately seduced me in order to trap me. That she sold me to a traveling circus to be exhibited to the gaping wonder of the crowd.

She believes me to be dead—I made sure of that. Evelina will be sitting pretty now, thinking she’s safe and secure, able to snare Marcus in her web, bind him with her silken lies and sting him with the poison of her lips, paralyzing him into stillness so that she can suck him dry.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Ven wondered if Marcus had told her that he’d communicated with his brother, that Ven was alive.

In his brother’s place, Ven would not have said anything to Evelina, and he doubted that Marcus would. Both brothers had learned at an early age to keep secrets. The truth was dangerous, might be disastrous, bringing peril to themselves and those they loved. Marcus would be slow to trust, reticent about speaking his thoughts aloud, naturally cautious and reserved.

He would also be extremely confused. Ven could not help but grin wryly. It served Marcus right. He had been very quick to believe Evelina’s accusation that Ven was a vicious, murdering monster. How astonished Marcus must have been when the murdering monster saved their lives.

I could tell Marcus my side of the story, Ven considered, as he gazed lip river. Marcus might even believe me.

Ven mulled it over and decided not to. He wasn’t sure exactly why. Guilt was some of it. Evelina had not entirely lied. He had meant to take her that night in the tall grass and he would have, if she had not managed to fend him off and wriggle out from beneath him. And he was responsible for the death of her father. She had not made that up. Ven had not killed Ramone with his own hand—the monks had done that. But they had murdered him because of Ven.