Page 96 of The Dragon and the Dove

Quieter still, Why is he letting you?

‘You betrayed us!’ she hissed at him. ‘You abandoned us.’

You abandoned me.

It all came screaming back. That night at the Summer Palace. The prince lording over a roomful of nobles as they quivered on their knees. The King of Valterre cutting out his own heart, and then the queen succumbing to a tide of shadows. Her sons, lined up to die right after her. Bibi, leaping to protect them. Bibi, dying beneath that raft of shadows. Val’s scream ripping through her chest.

Bibi’s unseeing eyes.

Bibi’s unbeating heart.

And Caruso, who came too late. Caruso, who did nothing to stop the prince on his mad crusade. Caruso, who let that damn Strix carry Sera off into the night. Caruso, who stood aside, while his friends shoved that knife into Ransom’s ribs.

Oh no. Tears pricked the back of her eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

Truth, said the old voice.

She didn’t give a rat’s ass. ‘Whatever.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.

The earnestness on his face was unnerving.

Caruso Dantes is a bad man, she chanted inside her head.

So why are you still standing here? said the old voice.

‘Valerie …’

‘Go away.’ She shoved him again. ‘Find another garden to haunt.’ There was a tear on her cheek. Traitorous little bastard. She scrubbed it away, then turned to inspect a leaf. ‘Goodbye, Caruso.’

He was a statue in the dark, those icy-blue eyes like frostbitten stars. She felt him watching her as she dipped her head, furiously plucking leaves off Fontaine’s holly bush just to find something to do with her hands.

In a low voice, he said, ‘What are you doing?’

‘Pruning.’ Val sniffed. ‘This bush is a mess.’

You are a mess, said the old voice.

Saints, why did she have to cry in front of him? Of all the soulless bastards in Fantome, why did Caruso Dantes have to witness the utter crumbling of her careful façade?

A warm hand curled around her wrist. ‘You’re beheading it.’

‘Would you prefer I behead you?’ she snapped, accidentally pricking her finger on a thorn.

A breathy laugh. ‘I’d love to watch you try.’

‘Of course you would, you freak.’

‘Your finger is bleeding.’

She held it up to the moonlight, watching the blood trickle down to her palm. ‘Yet another thing that’s your fault.’

He didn’t argue with her. Instead, he grabbed her hand and with deliberate slowness raised it to his mouth. A breath caught in her throat, his eyes pinning hers as he slid her finger into his mouth and gently licked it clean.

Val froze, a violent heat rippling down her spine.