My heart shrivels until it’s nothing but a husk. “You lied to me.”
“Sura—”
“Don’t call me that,” I snap, feeling everything inside of me start to unravel—everything I’d held on to feels brittle and fragile. The last few weeks. My blind, idiotic trust. My fuckinginfatuation. Me throwing myself at him, feeling sorry for the poor cast-aside prince, thinking we had only each other. Believing we had so much in common. Recalling every tender,mortifyingmoment in brutal heartbreaking detail. Confiding in him. Kissing him.
Givinghim my starsdamned virginity.
“I trusted you,” I say thickly. “You let me believe you were helping me, when all along you were like everyone else. You wanted me for what you thought I could do.”
Sands, I’d offered up myself—the precious Starkeeper—to him on a platter. I am such a fool.
“That’s not true.”
I grab his shoulders roughly. “Look me in the eyes and tell me that.”
“It isn’t.” He hesitates. “I don’t want to lie to you, Suraya. In the beginning, it might have started out like that. You had magic that could change the fate of the kingdom. Once I learned what you were, you became an objective, one I couldn’t allow my brother to have, so I played the part of the fugitive prince. But it was to keep you safe, I swear.”
I glance around. “Who knew?”
“Not many. Hamid, Aran, and Clementine later on.” He pauses as if pained. “My role in the Dahaka isn’t common knowledge. I needed everyone else to treat me as you saw me.”
I stagger backward. It feels like his jadu earth blade is quaking through the middle of my chest, leaving rubble and bloodied organs in its wake. I can’t fucking breathe, the pressure on my lungs too much... the pressure on my heart utterly excruciating.
I think of all the time we spent in Nyriell and the times I’d mistaken for intimacy, me moaning like a wanton in that cave and offering myself up to him, and I want to die. How could I have been sowrong? So desperate for my feelings to be returned. I drop my hands, and he reaches for them, catching me at my wrists.
“No, wait, please, you have to listen. Everything changed.”
“How did it change?” I bite out. “You kept the truth from me. You had every chance to tell me who you were, and you didn’t. You let me believe we were in danger from the Dahaka when all along we weren’t.”
“The dangerwasreal because of Javed’s bounty! I didn’t know who I could trust, while Hamid was ferreting out the turncoats. And I wanted to tell you so many times.” He drags a hand through his hair. “Javed needed to be dethroned, and you know what Morvarid is. A death magi! If word got out that I was the leader of the Dahaka, I would not have been able to destroy their hold on Oryndhr. I am a prince. This is my father’s legacy.”
My tone is soft and flat. “So now you’re a prince again? That’s convenient.”
“Suraya, please.”
“And him?” I ask with a vicious glare to the fake commander holding the reins hitched to the horses.
“Hamid is the face of the revolution. I’m its...”
“Heart,” I finish for him, my voice cracking on the word along with the very real organ in my chest. “Was it all a lie?”
“No.”
He shifts toward me, his hands sliding up my arms, and even as I hate it, I want to lean into him. I hate my weakness. I hatehim!
“Please, you have to trust me.”
“Trustyou?” I flare slightly, letting a wave of heat rise to the top of my skin, my runes blinding in the darkness. He pulls away sharply, his eyes wide as he holds his smarting hands to his chest. I only singed them a little, but still. “No. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“Sura... I love you.”
I almost don’t hear the achingly quiet whisper, but I don’t need to hear it. I don’t need any more of his lies. “No,Commander. You don’t lie to the people you love.”
With that, I leap from the wagon.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Jumping out of a moving carriage isn’t one of my smartest decisions.
