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“Go take a break,” I order, hurling a hundred-dollar bill at her from my pocket. “Make sure no one else comes in.”

“Y-Yes, s-sir.”

She catches the bill and flees without looking back.

When she’s gone, I grab Lilah by the crook of her elbow, drag her into the closet, and shut the door behind us.

Outside, the crowd is bellowing.

“Five! Four!”

In the low light in here, her eyes are shadowed, but the anger in them is still obvious.

“Do you have a closet fetish or something?” she snaps. “We keep ending up in tight spaces, and I’m starting to think it’s not an accident.”

“Ask me again,” I say.

She blinks. “What?”

“Your question. Ask it again.”

Lilah’s upper lip stiffens. “No thank you.” She adjusts the shawl around her shoulders. “I got my answer earlier. It came immediately and had some public humiliation mixed in for good measure, so I’m all set on doing it again.”

“Two! One!”

The doors shake with the cacophony. Two hundred voices going up at once, and horns, and the band starting in loud and sloppy behind all of it, and glass tinkling on glass.

“You got nothing. Silence isn’t an answer.”

“It absolutely is. It’s the most common one I’ve ever gotten.” She squeezes her eyes shut, then opens them again. “Can I go now?”

“I don’t answer a question like that in front of people.”

That gets her. Her eyebrows come down. “What?”

“You asked me in front of two hundred guests,” I say. “I don’t explain myself in front of an audience. Ever. Not to my brother, not to my captains, not to a room full of drunks. Never. That will never change.”

“You and your stupid rules,” she mutters. “Did you get cursed by a witch at birth or something? What happens if you break it?” She flings a hand out toward the ballroom doors. “Does the ceiling collapse? Do the little brass men come down off the staircase and bop you over the head? Because from where I’m standing, it looked a lot less like some ironclad ethical rule and more like a fuckboy liar who couldn’t come up with a smooth answer on the spot.”

She wants my rage.

But I won’t give her that.

It would only confirm that everything she thinks about herself is true.

And I won’t give her that, either.

“Ask me here,” I rasp. “Ask me now. When there’s no one but us around to hear it.”

She stares at me in obvious disgust.

“That’s your big offer?” she scoffs. “You chased me down and manhandled me into a coat check room so I can schedule a private appointment to get rejected?”

“Ask me,” I insist. “I’ll answer.”

“You realize how ridiculous that is?” she says. “A normal person would just say, Hey, Delilah, you’re a nice lady, I enjoy your company, please stop having a nervous breakdown next to the caviar.”

I grab her wrist. “Sladkaya,” I say in the most serious, honest, transparent voice I can. “Ask me what you mean to me.”