“Why are you here?”
He nodded toward Cassandra’s bedroom. “Her.”
“That the only reason?”
“Yes.”
“You capable of giving me something more than a one-word answer?”
“No.”
Her frustration spilled over. “Look, if she’s going to have any chance of surviving her appeal, you and I need to put our past aside and help her. I knew she wasn’t human anymore, but?—”
“How? How did you know that? And how did you know we would need the veiling potion to get through sentencing?”
The name burned in Mireille’s throat. “Gareth.”
Ronin flinched.
Good.
She wanted Ronin wrecked by guilt at the sound of her father’s name. “He’s been visiting my dreams. Showing me visions of that meeting in the throne room. Helping me ensure all the players were in place.”
“So you knew I was coming?” Ronin said, a bit breathlessly. Some hint of an emotion, finally.
“Yes.” She raised her chin.
“And you know how this plays out?”
“No,” Mireille admitted. “If he even tried to hint about what happens after the castle, I would wake up.”
“Convenient,” Ronin grumbled.
“Is it?” Mireille snapped, rising from the table and stepping into his space. She didn’t dare breathe in, didn’t need the distracting familiarity of his scent. “I think it’s the Goddess who’s waking me up. She doesn’t want me to see how this could go. She wants me to…”
“Wants you to what?” Ronin’s fingers tightened on his impressive arms. She remembered, all too clearly, how they’d felt wrapped around her. How safe and protected she’d been for the only time in her long, miserable life. A tiny blip of warmth in centuries of cold.
“Tochooseto fight for Cassandra without certainty of the outcome,” she said. “What happened to her?”
“She was Turned.”
Mireille rolled her eyes. “Yes, I had gath?—”
“By Prince Tristan Erabis.”
“What? How?”
“You don’t know how Turning works?” A vein fluttered in Ronin’s jaw. “He fell in love with her, they shared blood, and they fucked. Boom. A new Fae female is born on Ethyrios.”
His bitterness shredded through her chest, even as she recognized the envy within it. A love so powerful that it could change a person’s species? Mireille supposed thatwasthe kind of love that would inspire envy.
The kind of love she and Ronin might have shared, before fate yanked it away.
Before they’d ruined each other.
Creator, she’dpromisedherself she wouldn’t go down this path when she saw him again. A reunion she’d had ages to prepare for. Less than five minutes in and she was already breaking her own rules.
Fuckingfocus, Mireille.
