His grip on my chin tightened. “You didn’t drink any wine. I was watching you all through dinner, before you disappeared, before you came back... changed.” His thumb traced my jaw, slow and deliberate, like he was memorizing the shape of my lie. “You raised the cup to your lips three times. You never swallowed once.”
His thumb pressed against my jaw, angling my face up to meet his gaze. “I know the difference between drinking and performing, little bride. You were performing.”
I couldn’t breathe.
The petal’s manic energy still coursed through me, making my thoughts scatter, making it hard to think. His body was still flattened against mine, still flooding me with heat, and part ofme wanted to kiss him again, to distract him, to make him forget his questions.
But his gaze was relentless. Seeing too much.
“Your heart is galloping,” he continued. His free hand circled my wrist, rested against the pulse point there. I could feel him counting.
Checking. Hunting for the life I didn’t have.
“A hundred and forty beats per minute. Maybe more. That’s not excitement. That’s not arousal.” His voice dropped. “That’s a body under the influence of something.”
“I—”
“What did you take?” His fingers tightened around my wrist. “Tell me now, or I call the healer and have your blood purged. Whatever poison you’ve fed yourself?—”
“It’s not poison.”
“Then what is it?”
The question hung between us. His body was still close, but the dynamic had changed. No longer seductive, now threatening. A cage instead of an embrace.
I closed my eyes.
“Something to help me pass,” I whispered.
“Pass as what?”
The answer lodged in my throat. I couldn’t say it. Couldn’t admit the truth.
His hand released my chin. Grabbed my wrist instead, the other wrist, checking both pulse points now. Counting both rhythms, comparing them, searching for inconsistencies.
“Too fast,” he murmured. “Too strange. That’s not how hearts work. That’s not how blood flows.”
His eyes lifted to mine. “This isn’t a heartbeat, little bride. It’s a forgery.”
I said nothing.
There was nothing to say.
He stared at me for a long moment. The torch flickered above us, making him look less human than he already did.
Those eyes searched my face, my throat, the place where my heart was racing its false race.
Then he kissed me.
I didn’t expect it. One moment he was interrogating me, his voice hard and his grip harder. The next, his mouth was on mine, swallowing my silence, his hands releasing my wrists to fist in my hair instead.
This kiss was different.
Deeper. Hungrier. Angrier.
He kissed me like he was trying to consume me, as if seeking to devour my silence. And I kissed him back with the same desperation, because if this was my last hour of warmth, if he was about to expose me, if everything was about to end…
I wanted to spend my final moments burning.
