“Married? To whom?” A tangle of emotions rose in his chest—anger and jealousy and fear. And then … horrified realization. The pieces began sliding into place. She was educated, very educated. She always spoke with such surety and command. She’d been so secretive about her life in Pavan. She wanted to come back for her mother. Everything in him slowed, as if he were trying to claw himself free of time so that he could stop the words from leaving her mouth.

“I was supposed to marry Cassius Locke.”

He recoiled. He’d lived with the name Locke himself for so long, but now he thought he might vomit if he even thought it again. He took one step back, then another. Then he made himself look at her. One glimpse of her skyfire-white hair, and he wondered how he had not seen it before. He felt stupid and sick to his bones.

“Say something,” Aurora whispered.

“What am I supposed to say?” His voice was gravel, stripped down to stone, and the hurt in her expression immediately showered him with guilt. But he could not apologize. He was too busy desperately drawing on every ounce of control he had to stop from losing his mind.

Royalty. She was bleeding royalty.

He turned toward the door, suddenly desperate for space. His mind was calling up every suspicious word or moment in their history, seeing them in a new light, and he needed it to stop. Everything was unraveling—both the past they’d shared and the future he had envisioned.

She was royalty. He was, for all intents and purposes, a criminal.

“Where are you going?”

He did not answer, and as he reached the door, he felt her hands on his back.

“Wait, please. Let me explain.”

He kept his eyes fixed on the wooden door in front of him, tracing the grain to keep from looking back at her. “I understand, perfectly.”

“No! You don’t.” She slammed a hand on his back, none too gently. “Look at me.”

“I can’t,” he breathed, pressing his eyes closed. He’d said he wanted to be good for her. And somehow she had looked him in the eyes without laughing. In what world would an orphaned renegade be good for a future queen?

She slipped around him, sliding between his body and the door. “I am still me.”

“Are you? Nothing I know about you is true.”

Everything was a lie. From the moment they had met in the Eye, everything he thought he knew—all false.

She took his hand, holding it between both of hers and pressing it close to her chest. “We are true. I did not lie about any of that.”

He did not think she did. That was part of what made this so scorching hard. He loved her. She loved him. But it would not matter, not in this world.

Unless …