“Would you rather believe whatever your mind has conjured? Anything to get your brother released. Why go after Worley, when you can present Dresden with someone else?Someone he hates? Someone society would love brought to his knees to make up for his galling success. A lowly son of a butler and drift dancer. It would rectify the stain on society that I am. Another upstart removed.”
“You are mad.”
“A bit, I presume. Mad surely for believing anything of you.”
Her lips pressed together and her eyes filled. “Then we are mad together, aren’t we? For I feel the same. Mad for believing anything of you.”
Lucian and my father closed the door to the kitchen, their footsteps retreating through the house. Neither missed nor wanted at the moment.
“You were the one who came to me.”
“And you marked me.” She thrust out her wrist. “You bedded me. Youusedme. I thought I could trust you.”
“Don’t rewrite our relationship.”
“Is there such a thing? You have been leading me—lying to me—whenever it suits you.”
I leaned in. “There is little point doing anything other than what suits me.”
I watched the rage come over her face. The red and white mottled together, giving her color and depth and transforming the features I had never thought of as plain into a face that was active and alive.
“You even lie to yourself.”
“If it suits.”
“You think that a dozen good deeds, a hundred, will make up for your sins?”
“It depends on the sin.”
“Does it? Is that the justification you use?”
“That is the justification that everyone uses. Have you committed no sins to get your brother released, Marietta?”
“Yes, but I committed each knowingly. I didn’t delude myself into thinking myself blameless. I didn’t withhold information from you that was vital.”
“You didn’t have information that was vital.”
“But you did.”
“Nothing pertinent to you.”
“It would have been pertinent to know you were raped! By five now very dead women!”
Silence split the air.
My fingers hurt from their grip. “And your question? Are you going to ask it now?”
Her heavy breathing swallowed her silence. Strange, as I wondered if I would ever draw breath again.
“Those women. You had every reason to want them dead.”
“That isn’t much of a question.”
Her chest rose and fell, rose and fell. She wasn’t going to ask.
Unreality gripped me. The unpleasant sense of inversion. I was asking her to voice a question she didn’t want answered. Asking of her what I hadn’t asked of myself. Out of love.
Unable to ask Lucian. Unable to bear his response. Unable to do anything except run away.
