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I had sworn to the Bandrui and felt deeply ashamed for having betrayed her trust, even if it was only The Raven that knew.

“Do you know who gave them to you?”

“Yes.”

A mocking smirk played across his face, and he pulled a piece of the Bandrui’s loaf off and chewed on it as he watched me.

I didn’t like it. He knew something I didn’t know, but I was unwilling to ask questions lest I break my oath further. “Why won’t you touch me?”

“You’ll find the evidence of my touch all over your body if you have the stomach to look, little bug,” he parried back.

I narrowed my gaze. “You know exactly what I mean.”

“Do I?”

He was toying with me, and I both loved and hated it.

I narrowed my eyes at him. Oh, he wanted to play innocent games. I could play those, too. I could play them even harder when I was annoyed.

I slid from my chair the sinuousness of the body Rictus had crafted for me aiding me in this game. He watched me with hungry eyes as my knee notch between his thighs, parting them for me and letting me slither in close to him. My hand traveled the length of his thigh from knee to the rock-hard bulge at its core, where it stroked slow and torturously. I leaned my lips close as if I was going to kiss him.

He hesitated a single second, like he would call my bluff, before a black leather glove wrapped around my throat and slid one finger into my open mouth. “You play with fire, little bug. It’ll burn you if you dance too close.”

The vise of his other hand wrapped around my delicate mangled wrist and pressed my palm into the thick, rigid length of him. He guided me along the impressive impression of it in his leather riding pants before he pressed me back into my seat by the grip on my chin. “Now, eat, Cricket. Before you break what little resolve I have left in me to be a gentleman with you.”

God, he was huge. Not in length. I had expected more if we looked at his proportions, but the sheer thickness of him was daunting, and it made my mouth water to wrap around it. His words filtered in, letter by letter, and I snorted.

“I was unaware that included carving the woman you’re interested in up like a turkey. Perhaps I haven’t known many gentlemen in my life after all.”

He glared at me from across the dwindling bounty of our small repast. “We both know this is not what I had intended on.”

“Do I?” I tossed his words back at him. “No, I don’t think I do know that this wasn’t what you intended.”

The fire he had called upon danced in his baleful eyes as he watched me. “Had you not decided to attempt to assassinate my Ard Rí, I would have met you in the gardens, as we were intended. I’d have had a small picnic under the stars set out. We would have drunk milúll wine and watched the stars, and I would have spent the evening getting to know Sóna Mac Raith as she was before she came to this place. And letting you know me, the me before I became The Raven of the Dawn. I’d have brought you the two ice roses that I have drying in my quarters for if you survive this. I would have given you the stars, Sóna. And then I would have asked you to meet me again the next night. And I’d have held your hand and recited you Fae poetry. I’d have taught you all about the ways of the Fae, a lesson that seems to always escape you. I’d have danced with you in the breaking rays of the dawn and carried you back to your bed. And I would have repeated that every night for the rest of eternity until your heart bloomed for me, and you let mine bloom for you.”

I swallowed hard around the bite stuck in my throat as he recounted the thousands of nights of romance that he had planned out so expertly for us.

It was romantic. It was soft. It was gentle. It was everything a much younger and much more naïve me would have loved. It was everything I had always secretly wanted but never had the nerve to be vulnerable enough to ask for or dream of. And he had done it, planned it all out with ease. As if it had been the easiest thing for him.

“Instead, I’m trapped in the dark, in an unending cycle of you slicing me up and fucking me senseless,” I bit back at him, bitter over what I had lost without having done anything wrong.

I had been cheated, and I hadn’t even done anything to deserve it. The injustice of it all was an acrid stain across my tongue.

“Instead, I am down here, getting hard as diamonds, showing you the me that is beneath all the layers of chivalry. Tell me, little bug, was it worth it?” He tilted his head, watching me.

I opened my mouth to answer and saw the flicker of viciousness in his eye. The pieces came together, and I pushed to my feet, flinging the charger full of food at his face. “This is all just part of your interrogation, isn’t it! All that nonsense about the gardens and the stars and the dawn—that was all a fucking lie, wasn’t it? Just trying to get me to admit that I tried to kill that piece of shit? You fucking bastard. No wonder you won’t fucking touch me. I’m nothing but a dirty daoire and a dirty criminal to you, aren’t I?”

“Sóna—”

“Shut up, Raven. Not another fucking word from you. Put me back up in the fucking dragon. Get your knife out and start fucking carving because the answer is still the fucking same. I didn’t try to kill the King. I was only there because I’m required to be there. I’d rather be anywhere else. I’d rather be scrubbing out the stables with my toothbrush than picking up after that fucking pig. I almost wish I had tried to kill him. At least then, this would have been all worth it. It would have been worth it to see his look of surprise when I cut his cock off. Make no mistake, Raven, had I tried to kill the Ard Rí, the first thing you would have found would have been his cock because I’d have tossed it out the window.” I turned on my heel and walked into the darkness toward where I thought the cuffs would dangle, feeling around myself as I went.

“Sóna . . .” he whispered softly. He hadn’t moved.

I could measure myself by the angle of his voice and the warm light to my back. “I said shut the fuck up. And when you come back over here, the only thing going into me is your fucking knife.”

I heard the resolute sigh as he rose and then I felt his gloved hand wrap around my wrist and guide me to the waiting cuffs. He was quiet while locking me into them, letting his touch glide down my arm when he was done. We stood in silence, me fuming and him silent as the darkness around me.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he whispered as a means of an apology.