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She rubbed her palm over her mouth. Anger remained in her face, but hurt had settled under it. I could survive her rage. The hurt was harder because I had earned it after she had trusted me with far more than blood.

“Is there another plan?” she asked. “Anything else you’ve hidden that changes whether I live?”

“No. There are parts of my past you haven’t seen. I’ll answer for them when they matter. I have no other bargain with Adrian and no second plan for your blood. I’m not saving another confession that changes whether you live for later.”

She studied me while the red line completed its circle around the fallen iron.

“Why tell me now? Only because I asked?”

“I owed you the truth in the chapel. I was going to tell you here once I finished the account of Cecily, though you reached the question first. Lying again would prove I haven’t changed.”

She considered that without offering me belief or disbelief. “What happens if I don’t feed you again?”

Hunger tightened at the thought. The open manacle would stay open, but the waist chain might stop loosening and keep me tied to the lower court. The blood already in me would last for days, and the old stores could extend that.

“You have time to decide,” I said. “I won’t ask you for blood while you’re doing it.”

She held my gaze. “Don’t make a noble sacrifice out of it. I’m not responsible for rewarding you because you finally admitted the truth.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“And don’t use the chains to punish yourself where I can see it. That would make your guilt another problem I have to manage.”

She was right. Enduring the iron where she could see it would only place my guilt in her hands.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll use the blood stores if the court opens them. I’ll take care of myself. You won’t be forced to watch me starve.”

Some tension left her shoulders. I wanted to cross the floor and tell her the man who’d planned to abandon her was gone, but words couldn’t prove it. Only my next choice could.

“You said the plan changed when I refused the Crown,” she said. “Did you love me then?”

The question caught me harder than any accusation. “No. I barely knew you.”

Her brows rose, and for one second I saw the woman who had called my court’s timing bloody awful while standing half dressed in my sitting room.

“At least that answer isn’t dressed up,” she said.

“I wanted you. I respected you. I’d started caring whether you were safe for reasons that didn’t serve me. Love would be a grand word used too early, and you’ve had enough manipulation for one night.”

Her mouth pressed into a line, though the anger in her eyes eased by a fraction. “Do you love me now?”

I could have used the question. Three words might have kept her in the room, and some part of me wanted to say them for that reason alone.

“I’m getting close,” I said. “I won’t call it love while I’m hoping the word will stop you leaving.”

Bryony looked at me for a long moment. “That might be the first answer tonight that didn’t make me want to throw a chair.”

“There are several within reach.”

“Don’t push your luck.”

The small flash of humour disappeared quickly. She was still Bryony, but she no longer trusted me with the parts of herself she’d shared.

She stepped over the red line and headed for the door.

“I need distance,” she said. “I need to think without you watching every reaction.”

“Take whatever space you need.”