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I snorted, interrupting the nonsense he’d spout next. “Whatever new game this is, I’m not playing. I know it’s all a lie, and every time you reset the board, I will find my way back to Minerva, to Devere. I will stop you. No matter how many times I have to do this, I will end it. And end you.”
The fireside poker sat innocently beside the grate.Iron. If I could grab the poker and plunge it through his chest, it would end. But I’d risk killing Devere too.
Adair reclined in the opposite chair beside the fireplace and crossed his long legs at the knee. “I applaud your tenacity, but as you were told before, you see all of this through a warped lens.”
I knew not to listen to him, knew his words were tricks, but stuck in the chair, I had no choice.
“Why is it you remember, but nobody else does?” he asked. He didn’t wait for my answer. “How many times have you returned to Minerva, only for events to end badly for you and Devere? How many lifetimes brought you to this moment? You remember some, but not all.”
“If you’re going to tell me this is his fault, I won’t believe you. You may not lie, but you slither out of the truth. I cannot trust a word that leaves your lips.”
He sighed, and as he leaned forward, the guise of the lord blurred at its edges and fell away, turning to mist and vanishing altogether, until the man in the chair was no man at all, but fae. Hair as dark as night flowed over his shoulders, skin as pale as the moon, and eyes like hungry stars. He smiled again, revealing sharply pointed canine teeth. “Darling Valentine, it is not me you should not trust.”
The dizzying change in his appearance set my heart racing. But it was fine. I knew what he was, knew his games. All of this was fine. Nothing could touch me. It was all an illusion of his making. “End this pantomime. You can. Let Devere go. You made him but you do not own him. Just let him go.”
He smirked and plucked at his fine black silk trousers. “It is sweet, truly, that you believe he needs you to save him, when it is quite the other way around.”
“What do you want? I’ll give it to you. Just let him go. Let him have a life.”
“The heroic Valentine Anzio, criminal investigator, the boy who flew away from Minerva and made a life for himself. You like that version of yourself, no? The criminal investigator fits your narrative more than the lunatic thrashing in a hospital bed? But which is true and which is fantasy?”
“Fuck you. This is true, right now. This is real. Nothing else matters.”
“Said like someone who does not know the truth. And that truth is more terrible than you know. Step back a moment, Valentine. Give yourself perspective and see beyond that which he shows you.”
“I do not need to see beyond when what I see right in front of me are your pitiful attempts to manipulate me. I won’t believe you, whatever you say. I won’t listen.”
He raised a hand and pointed at the tick-tocking clocks. “It is easier, sometimes, to lose oneself in fantasy than accept the truth. The boy beneath the stairs crafted company for himself so his mind did not shatter. You cannot be blamed for fighting to survive. But what if the fantasy was madeforyou and you alone? What if everything you saw, touched, tasted, breathed, and even loved… was manufactured, layer upon layer, so you did not know what was real and what was a dream? How do you know the truth if fantasy is all you see?” He leaned forward again. Long black hair fell forward, over his shoulders, and his eyes shone their otherworldly magic. “How does the bird know there is a world outside its cage?”
“It knows because why else would it have wings?”
“Valentine.” He smiled. “Your world is a lie, and the hundreds of others you’ve lived, lie upon lie upon lie, each one a cog in the machine of another’s making. This is not my fantasy.” He flicked a hand at the store. “Nor is it yours.”
I swallowed the knot rising in my throat. “Devere wouldn’t do that to me.”
“He didn’t know he was until I showed him last night during the dinner. Perhaps I shouldn’t have, but even I grow tired of these go-arounds, as you call them.”
“Last night?” Between the moment he’d mistaken me for Rochefort’s valet and when he’d saved me from Vine and Claude, something had changed. I’d seen it on his face as his beetles had ravaged the fae, and I’d felt it in his reverent touch as we’d lain together. The sadness in his eyes told the truth that his words could not.
Bitterness climbed up my throat again, and this time I didn’t swallow. I let it burn. “He… controls all this?”
“He made it, like he made these toys. He is quite the master.”
“Why?” I whispered.
“Because once there was a boy whom he kissed, a boy who betrayed him, and ever since that day, he’s locked the boy away in a fantasy of his making, bringing him back time and time again. Dreams within dreams within dreams, so deep he drowned you both. At first, he did it to hurt you, but then to hurt himself. Until he forgot who he was. Until he fell into the lie so thoroughly that it became real. You have been trapped like this, circling each other in an endless charade neither of you have been able to escape for years, Valentine. Your whole life, in fact.”
Horror chilled my blood. “No, that’s not possible.”
“You never left Minerva.”
“I have. I studied in Massalia. I saw… I went…” I reached for the memories in my mind, but even as I did, they slipped through my fingers, turning to dust.
“You have lived a thousand lives, walked a thousand paths, and all of them have brought you back here, where it invariably ends in tragedy.”
An ache clutched my heart. “Devere wouldn’t do this to me.”
“He has lied and misled you for countless mortal lifetimes. He is the monster you fear me to be.”
