He cupped her face and wiped the wetness off her cheeks with his thumbs. “I just got you back.”
Selene leaned into him and closed her eyes. “You’re not losing me, Augustus.”
“Then why does it feel that way?”
She kissed him, and he gave in, breath ragged.
The tide hissed around their ankles, the dronsian cried overhead, and the world spun out of reach.
When she finally pulled back, breathless and shining in the moonlight, Augustus knew two things with terrifying certainty: she loved him.
And she was still going to leave.
Alexandra Vitalatos had been listening to Titos complain for long enough.
He’d been foolish enough to trust her counsel, foolish enough to believe her prophecies were anything but a mask she wore to keep him pliant. She’d let him use her name, let him imagine her weak-minded.
Now, she was bored with the game.
At her dressing table, she dabbed perfume on her throat and smoothed her skirts. Dinner had begun half an hour ago. That was long enough.
In the bathing chamber, eight-year-old Evander Demakis sat curledagainst the wall where she’d left him. Wide eyes, thin wrists, soft as the rest of his useless family. He flinched when she offered her hand, but he took it.
“You’ve been so good,” she said. “You deserve a treat.”
Together they walked the torchlit hall. Screams reached them, faint at first.
Evander’s grip trembled.
Alexandra smiled.
The double doors to the dining chamber yawned open, and the last of the screaming servants fled the room like horses from a fire.
Inside, the Demakis royal line sprawled across their feast like ruined dolls left out in the rain. The sweet rot of spiced wine and blood thickened the air.
Titos slumped at the head, eyes glazed, a ribbon of blood from nose to chin. Daphira’s jeweled hand was frozen on the table’s edge. Calliane and Belenor gaped like fish hauled from the river, mouths red and slick. Even Thessa—clever, observant Thessa—lay boneless in her chair, Dyphis Flower clawing her insides to ribbons.
And there was Kassandra.
Her aunt’s eyes, so like her mother’s, forever narrowed with suspicion, were wide now in a mask of shock. Her body sagged against the carved wood.
Evander whimpered, trying to recoil.
Alexandra tugged him forward. His feet refused to move, but her hand squeezed tighter, and forward he went until his shoulder pressed beneath her palm. His little chest rose and fell too fast.
“Steady,” she whispered, brushing invisible dust from him. “You must look upon them. Remember this.”
The boy blinked up at her, confused, afraid.
Alexandra bent to his ear, her lips brushing his dark hair. “Remember it all…Your Majesty.”
Epilogue
Nikolas Contas waited for the lady’s maid to meet his stare. Waited for the flush to rise in her cheeks. Then let his smile stretch, slow and sure, from left to right. He never could help himself around a beautiful woman.
An hour later—Dimitrios crowned and surrounded by family—Nikolas was trying and failing to hush the lady’s giggles down a deserted palace wing. They stumbled between pillars and statues, knocked over tables, mouths fused, laughter smudged into moans.
Nikolas loved this part of the chase, when pretense fell away and need took over.
