She grabbed it. Fast. The same rehearsed swipe from the car this morning, the same quick flip to face-down. But this time he wasn’t driving. This time he was watching her face, and what he saw there made the humming falter.
“Everything okay?” he asked. Kept his voice light.
“Just spam.”
The stammer from the car was gone. The smile was real. But underneath it, cutting through the warm, layered scent of her like a knife through silk, was that same acrid note.
Deception.
He knew the scent of deception the way a sommelier knew a corked wine. Instantly, without analysis. It was the chemical signature of a lie forming on a person’s skin, and he had spent his entire life in the courts and councils of the preter world, where deception was the lingua franca and truth was a currency no one spent.
And Zia was lying to him.
Zia, who didn’t know how to fake things. Who existed without armor. Who had told himBilly said that tooin an elevator because she had promised herself never to pretend a fear didn’t exist.
He nodded. His arm tightened around her. He returned his gaze to his tablet.
The humming stopped.
And in the silence that replaced it, the practiced speed of her swipe rearranged itself in his memory. Not tonight’s. Every swipe. The one in the car this morning. The one at her desk two days ago. The one he’d caught on the balcony last week, her face briefly shadowed before the brightness returned.
She had been hiding something.
Not for a moment. For days.
And there was only one person Zia would hide. Only one name that could make a woman who could not fake things choose deception over truth. Only one ghost with the power to make her lie to the man whose chest had been humming for her since the third day of their marriage.
Billy.
CHAPTER NINE
I REACH FOR HIS HANDacross the breakfast counter, and his fingers close around mine a beat too late.
Not wrong. Not cold. Just late. A fraction of a second where there used to be none, a gap so small it shouldn’t register, except my hand has been reaching for his every morning for two weeks and it knows the difference between a man who catches you and a man who remembers to.
He’s still holding my hand. He’s still looking at me with those pale eyes. He’s still Alexei, the collar-straightening, breakfast-ordering, espresso-machine-tolerating man I married.
But the humming stopped.
I noticed it two days ago. I told myself I was imagining it.
I noticed it again yesterday. I told myself he was tired.
This morning, I woke up and he was already dressed. Not unusual. He’s an early riser, and Ruby sends the morning briefing at 6 a.m. sharp. But he was standing by the window instead of the bed. Looking at the mountains instead of at me. And when he turned and said “Good morning, little one,” the words were right but the warmth behind them was a degree cooler than it used to be.
One degree.
Most people wouldn’t notice one degree. Most people can’t tell the difference between a man who is completely present and aman who is almost completely present, because the gap is so small it’s invisible.
But I’ve spent two weeks learning the temperature of Alexei Lykaios, and one degree is an avalanche.
I don’t say anything.
Because what would I say? Your humming has gaps in it? You were looking at the mountains instead of me? Your “good morning” was faster than usual, which means you said it from habit instead of from the place where you keep the things you mean?
I would sound insane.
And besides, there are reasonable explanations. The Blood Oval has been demanding more of his time. Three separate Lyccan territories are disputing border rights, and the trade negotiations with the Bellecourts have reached a stage that requires his personal attention. Ruby’s briefings have gotten longer. His meetings run later. The preter world doesn’t pause because its prince got married, and the weight of the things he carries, the alliances, the politics, the impossible balancing act of being the last of his kind in a world that needs him to be everything, would exhaust anyone.
