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“And you did.” Ash brushed a dozen clinging silk petals from his coat. “Good gods. It’s like fighting a hydrangea.”

“No one told you that you had to chase me. And besides, I’m covered in feathers. Where did your wings go, anyway?”

“Don’t change the subject.” Ash’s eyes were chips of ice. “How long have you been lying to me? How long have you known you were immune to my magic?”

Dru pushed herself up on her elbows, the grass beneath her rustling like more silk. She saw Ash’s eyes dart down to her, noting her movement, and then slide away. His chest was rising and falling fast as well, and sweat glimmered on his collarbones, just where she had licked him at the banquet.

Don’t think about that.

“How long have you known?” she replied. “Surely you didn’t just realize tonight.”

“The other night, when you came to my room. I knew then.” His mouth twisted—disgust, rage, she couldn’t tell. “I had told you not to wander the halls. I had told you not to anger my mother. Yet you did those things anyway.” His gaze locked on hers. “And when you spoke of not wanting to displease me, of worrying about what I felt, none of that emotion was in your eyes. All I could see there was anger and fear. You weren’t drawn to me. You’re afraid of me.”

“Of course I am,” Dru hissed. She was aware that, having pushed herself up on her elbows, she had accidentally given Ash a spectacular view of her cleavage. Oh well. “How could I not be? I’m nothing here in Faerie. You’re the Prince. You’re everything. You joke about having your minions killed, but is it really a joke when you could absolutely do it?”

His expression changed subtly, but enough. For a moment, the facade cracked, revealing something under it Dru had not expected. The rawness of real emotion. “You think I would do that?”

“I don’t know what you’d do,” Dru whispered. “But you have the power to do anything you want to me. Who wouldn’t be afraid?”

He sat up, knees on either side of her hips. “You should know me better than that.” His gaze slid over her as if he couldn’t help himself, from her face to her breasts. The look sent a shock of electric sparks through her.

“Hey,” she said. “Eyes up, faerie guy.”

He shot her a wry glance before reaching to pluck her brooch from the bodice of her dress. So that was what he’d been looking at. She was mildly disappointed. “I gave you this,” he said. “I pressed it into your hand. You remember none of it.”

“I didn’t know it came from you.” Her voice softened a little. She tried to catch herself. There was no safety in being open or vulnerable with him. She could no more trust him than he could trust her. “You’re crushing me,” she said, though he wasn’t. There was something about his weight pressing her down that made a dangerous warmth rush through her body.

“Oh, of course, my lady.” His tone was mocking as he sprang to his feet. He reached a hand to help her up and she took it. As she rose she glimpsed the back of his coat. It was shredded, as if claws had torn it open.

His wings.

Dru let go of his hand, brushing grass and feathers from her dress. It was ruined. Many of the petals had been torn off, leaving, she realized, little transparent patches of fabric. Yikes.

Dru looked up to find Ash’s gaze following her movements. “Give me back my brooch,” she said, although her voice came out less demanding than she’d hoped.

“As you wish.” A flicker at the corner of his mouth. “Every interaction we’ve had,” he added, a little wonderingly, “you’ve been lying.”

“I understand that’s rare for you,” said Dru, as he came closer, the brooch in his hand. “And I wasn’t lying to you all the time. Just when I had to.”

“You feel no loyalty at all to me.” He was close enough now that she could see the faint flecks of gold in his eyes. The way his hair was tangled, the velvet of his coat wet with dew from the grass. The glint of the silver star on his forehead. “And what you have shown me has not been compulsion, but a lie.”

Around them, the forest watched in silence. The leaves above rustled faintly in the breeze; somewhere distant, an owl cried out, the sound hollow and mournful. Dru felt every heartbeat like it was hammering against her ribs.

He reached out, and for a moment she almost drew back, before she realized what he was doing. He was pinning the brooch to her dress, just at the spot where the fabric ended and her skin began.

She could feel his hands brushing against her as he moved. She didn’t think it was intentional. “I have shown you exactly as much loyalty as you’ve earned.”

“And how much is that?”

She looked up into his face. “None at all.”

His pupils widened. “No one has ever said anything like that to me before,” he said, and then the brooch fell out of his hand as he pulled her toward him and kissed her.

One of his arms lashed around Dru’s waist; the other buried itself in her hair. She inhaled sharply and then his lips were on hers and it was exquisite and terrible in the way immensely powerful things were terrible: gods and angels and heavenly fire.

He gasped against her mouth as she caught at the lapels of his coat and shoved them off his shoulders. He stopped touching her for a moment so he could wriggle out of the coat before his hands were back on her, shaping the curve of her waist, his fingernails scratching against silk petals. Where the fabric was transparent she felt his touch like hot brands. It was like one of their battles during training—the push-pull, the clawing desperation, this time not to win but to be closer.

Dru knew better than to be kissing him. In some tiny part of herself, she knew. But it was like being caught in a storm much stronger than she was. The want she felt every time she looked at him, the desire she had shoved down into the depths of her consciousness, expanded now, burning through her as if her blood were lamp oil, her bones dry tinder. And he was good at this, too, skilled enough that it felt as if he already knew what she would like, already knew what would please her.