Guilt stabbed her. “Of course, I did—I do. I never wanted to lie to you, Alex. I hated every moment of it. There were so many times I wanted to tell you the truth, but I couldn’t. You try to make it sound so simple, but it isn’t. I did what I had to for the sake of the mission. Because I believe in what I’m doing. Because I believe in Bruce. Because I know the alternative and never wish to see anyone else’s mother in a cage. So if it means I have to speak a few untruths, if it means I couldn’t tell you what I was doing, if it means I have to pretend to be interested in a few men to get information, then I will do so. Gladly.”

“Is that what you told yourself when you drugged me?”

She flushed with guilt. “That was an accident.”

“So you didn’t come to my room with the intention of knocking me out to search for the missive we retrieved from the monk?”

Her face heated some more. She shouldn’t be surprised that he’d figured it out. “Yes . . . no . . .” She gazed up at him helplessly. “I changed my mind.”

“Before or after you planned to seduce me?”

“It wasn’t like that, Alex. I never intended it to go that far. What happened between us was real. With what you learned about Phillip, you have to know that.”

She’d won that point, at least. He didn’t argue, but his mouth still flattened in a thin white line. “Justify it however you wish, but it was wrong, and it all comes to an end tonight. No more lying. No more spying. No more doing whatever it takes. I’ve been through this before; I won’t do it again.”

He sounded so final. So stubborn. So intractable. So confident in the righteousness of his view of things. “Or what, Alex? Will you do the same thing you did last time that someone didn’t meet your stringent sense of right and wrong? Will you leave and turn your back on me just like you did your friends? Or maybe you will turn on me and betray me, too, for some idealized myth of chivalry that doesn’t exist?”

Alex’s ears were ringing and his head blared. His lungs felt as if he’d just swallowed a hot ball of fire. She’d learned more from Viper than how to use a knife and defend herself; she’d learned how to skewer and eviscerate with her tongue. She’d learned how to find a place of pain, poke it, and make it hurt some more.

Idealized myth? She’d reduced the hardest thing he’d ever done to a bard’s tale. She made him sound rigid, idealistic, and uncompromising—as if he hadn’t tried to think of another way.