I cross my arms, settling back in my chair. This is playing out exactly as I want it to. “I know he would have married Evangeline Samos, continued fighting a useless war, and kept ignoring a country full of angry, oppressed people. Does that sound at all familiar?”
He may be a snake in human form, but even Maven doesn’t have a retort for that. He slaps down the report in front of him. Too quickly. It faces up, just for a second, before he turns it over. I glimpse only a few words. Corvium. Casualties. Maven sees me see them, and he hisses out a sigh of annoyance.
“As if that will help you,” he says quietly. “You’re not going anywhere, so why bother?”
“I suppose that’s true. My life probably won’t last much longer.”
He tips his head. Concern furrows his brow, as I hope it will. As I need it to. “What makes you say that?”
I glare up at the ceiling, studying the elaborate molding and the chandelier above us. It flickers with tiny electric bulbs. If only I could feel them.
“You know Evangeline won’t let me live. Once she’s queen . . . I’m done for.” My voice trembles, and I push all my fear into the words. I hope it works. He has to believe me. “It’s what she’s wanted since the day I fell into her life.”
He blinks at me. “You don’t think I’ll protect you from her?”
“I don’t think you can.” My fingers pick at my gown. Not as beautiful as the ones made for court, but just as overwrought. “You and I both know how easy it is for a queen to be killed.”
The air ripples with heat as he continues to stare, daring me to meet his gaze. My natural instinct is to glare back, but I lean away, refusing to look at him. It will only incense him further. Maven loves an audience. The moment stretches, and I feel bare before him, prey in the path of a predator. That’s all I am here. Caged, restrained, leashed. All I have left is my voice, and the pieces of Maven I hope I know.
“She won’t touch you.”
“And what about the Lakelanders?” I snap my head back up. Tears of anger spring to my eyes, born of frustration, not fear. “When they rip apart your already-splintering kingdom? What happens when they win this endless war and burn your world to embers?” I scoff to myself, heaving a shuddering breath. The tears fall freely now. They must. I have to sell this with every inch of myself. “I guess then we’ll end up in the Bowl of Bones together, executed side by side.”
By the way he pales, the little color he has draining from his face, I know he’s thought the same thing. It plagues him endlessly, a bleeding wound. So I twist the knife.
“You’re on the edge of civil war. Even I know that. What’s the point in pretending there’s a scenario where I make it out of this alive? Either Evangeline kills me or the war does.”
“I told you already, I won’t let that happen.”
The snarl I throw his way doesn’t need to be faked. “In what life can I trust anything out of your mouth ever again?”
When he stands, the cold fear pooling in my stomach isn’t fake either. As he rounds the table, crossing to me in lean, elegant strides, I lock every muscle, tensing up so I don’t shake. But I quiver anyway. I brace myself for a blow as he takes my face in disturbingly soft hands, both thumbs tight under my jaw, inches away from digging into my jugular.
His kiss burns worse than his brand.
The sensation of his lips on mine is the worst kind of violation. But for him, for what I need, I keep my hands fisted in my lap. My nails dig into my flesh instead of his. He needs to believe as his brother believed. He needs to choose me, the way I tried to make Cal choose me before. Still, I can’t find it in me to open my mouth, and my jaw remains locked shut.
He breaks the kiss first, and I hope he can’t feel my skin crawl beneath his fingers. Instead, his eyes search mine, looking for the lie I keep well hidden.
“I lost every other person I ever loved.”
“And whose fault is that?”
Somehow, he trembles worse than I do. He steps back, letting me go, and his fingers scratch at one another. I’m shocked because I recognize the action. I do it too. When the pain in my head is so horrible I need another kind to draw me away. He stops when he notices me staring, clasping both hands to his sides as tightly as he can.
“She broke a lot of my habits,” he admits. “Never broke that one. Some things always come back.”
“She.” Elara. I see her handiwork right in front of me. The boy she shaped into a king through a torture she called love.
He sits back down, slowly. I keep staring, knowing it unsettles him. I put him off balance, and still I don’t understand exactly why.
Every other person I ever loved.
I don’t know why I’m included in that statement. But I know it’s the reason I’m still breathing. Careful, I edge the conversation back to Cal.
“Your brother is alive.”
“Unfortunately so.”
“And you don’t love him?”
He doesn’t bother to look up, but his eyes waver on the next report, fixed on a single spot. Not because he’s surprised, or even sad. He looks more confused than anything, a little boy trying to solve a puzzle with too many missing pieces. “No,” he says finally, lying.
“I don’t believe you,” I tell him. I even shake my head.
Because I remember them as they were. Brothers, friends, raised together against the rest of the world. Even Maven can’t shut himself off from something like that. Even Elara can’t break that kind of bond. No matter how many times Maven tried to kill Cal, he can’t deny what they were once.
“Believe what you want, Mare,” he replies. As before, he puts on an air of disinterest, violently trying to convince me this means nothing to him. “I know for a fact that I don’t love my brother.”
“Don’t lie. I have siblings too. It’s a complicated thing, especially between me and my sister. She’s always been more talented, better at everything, kinder, smarter. Everyone prefers her to me.” I mumble my old fears, spinning them into a web for Maven. “Take it from a person who knows. Losing one of them—losing a brother . . .” My breath hitches, and my mind flies. Keep going. Use the pain. “It hurts like nothing else.”