“So you’re delusional as well as a liar? Great. Fabulous. What exactly are you disputing? Your lying or our fucking?”

“If I remember correctly, you were hardly taken advantage of by me. And that’s what you’re making it sound like.” She jutted forward on her hips. “Indeed, I recall exactly how your voice sounded in my ear as you said my name.”

He recoiled. Blinked a couple of times. Then he leaned in as well. “But that wasn’t your name, was it. As far as I knew, I was laying with a maid, not the heir to the goddamn throne!”

“You were laying with me!” She struck her own chest. “I’m who you were with!”

“Bullshit! You don’t think for a fucking moment that I would have made different choices if I’d known who you really were? Or are you so fucking selfish and stuck-up, Your Serene Highness, that you can’t comprehend or care, for even a minute and a half, that there are repercussions when you lie about your identity and lose your virginity to the wrong fucking brother!”

“I didn’t mean for it to go as far as it did!”

“That I believe,” he countered grimly.

“iAm—”

“No.” He put out both his palms. “Just—no. I’m not going to rehash this bullshit with you. I don’t have the time or the interest.”

“I was going to tell you. I know that I’ve put you in a horrible position—”

“My brother just lost his shellan,” he snapped. “That is a problem. She died in front of him, and he spent most of the day and some of the night preparing her body for a goddamn funeral pyre. Then he got to watch her burn until there was nothing left but ashes on the cold ground. That shit is real. But, wait, the fun and games ain’t over! To top it all off, I just learned that your mother, bitch that she is, is prepared to attack the only people who have ever tried to take care of me and Trez if he isn’t delivered like an overnight package on her doorstep tomorrow at midnight. All so that he can have the very dubious honor and privilege of getting mated to the likes of you.” As Catra gasped, he bit out, “So the fact that I had sex with you is so far down my list of priorities, it’s not even on my radar screen. You just aren’t that big a deal, Princess.”

She was not going to cry.

No, she was not.

Even though her chest was screaming in pain, she would not crumble in front of him. She had brought this upon them both—and beyond the private strife, it appeared that real dangers for her people were imminent.

“I wanted to live,” she heard herself say hoarsely. “For once, I wanted to live. And I was not going to get a second chance. You … you were the only opportunity I was going to get, and I was going to tell you tonight. I knew it wasn’t fair. I’m very sorry.”

Turning away from him, she went to the sliding glass door and opened things up.

“Time for me to come and join the lovebirds?” s’Ex muttered.

“Were you aware that my mother has issued a declaration of war against Wrath, son of Wrath? Over the Anointed One and our mating?”

The executioner grew very still, his robes flapping around him in the gusts. Meeting her eye, he shook his head gravely. “If that is true, that would not be advised.”

SEVENTY-FIVE

Annnnnnnnd this was why people shouldn’t get married in Vegas after knowing a person for only twenty-four hours, iAm thought.

As the female he’d assumed was just a maid, but had turned out to be the heir to the fucking throne, confronted her mother’s executioner, he wanted to take the bridge. The only possible saving grace in the whole mess was that even though he’d managed to be the first lover of his brother’s betrothed, at least Trez wasn’t likely to be shattered.

Not because of that, at any rate.

Small comfort.

Wasn’t life grand.

The good news? He wasn’t going to have to be worried about any of this female shit again for a long while. After this experience? He was going back into the land of the left hand. Celibacy had worked for him thus far, and he was ready to re-embrace himself, so to speak.

s’Ex came in properly and shut the door behind him. “What is this about war?”

iAm rolled his eyes. “Don’t try to tell me that the Queen has made the threat without you. You’re the general of her army. Her enforcer. Give me a fucking break.”

“I can assure you,” s’Ex muttered as he whipped off his hood, “I would have told her no. We are capable warriors, especially my guards, and we have armaments that no one is aware of. That does not mean it is advisable to court the wrath of Wrath. His reputation over the centuries precedes him.”

iAm looked at the guy. Under other circumstances, he would have been convinced that s’Ex was talking truth, but after having just been snowed by maichen—the Princess, rather—he was not as arrogant about his powers of perception anymore.

“They’re not turning my brother over to your people,” he said. Then he glanced at the Princess. “And they have the backing of the symphaths. It doesn’t matter what you threaten or what you do, where you go or who you try to strong-arm, Wrath and the Brothers are not going to give him to you.”

“You make it sound as if I want him.” Her voice grew hoarse. “I do not. I shall take no male unto my body or my heart.”

He shrugged. “That would be poetic. If you hadn’t already proven how great a liar you can be.”

The flare of pain in her eyes was something he refused to dwell on. Hell, for all he knew, she was just disappointed she’d gotten caught.

Jesus, if she had mated his brother, would she have expected these little rolls in bed to continue—

Stop it. Just cut the crap, he told his brain. Given the number of things he could legitimately beat himself over the head with, he really shouldn’t be adding hypotheticals to the list.

“How did you find out about this?” s’Ex asked. “This declaration?”

iAm looked over at the male. “A call came in to the audience house. It was from an unidentified number on an untraceable line, but more to the point, as no one else in Caldwell knows about my brother’s situation with the s’Hisbe—or the mourning period of the Queen—it had to be legit. There was too much inside information, and as for how they got the number? It’s no big secret.”

Interesting how he’d used the they there.

Yeah, he was beginning to feel vampire, not Shadow, regardless of his DNA. Then again, Wrath and the Brotherhood had offered him and his brother food, shelter, friendship, loyalty.

The s’Hisbe had only been full of demands and jails.

“When you go back there,” iAm said, “you can tell them my brother and I aren’t staying with the vampires anymore, and Wrath and the Brothers have no knowledge of where we have gone. We are going to disappear, and none of you”—he glared at the Princess—“will be able to find us.”

Another bene of this royal reveal of hers?

The one thing that might have torn him up at the idea of leaving, the one tie he might have had to here, was now gone.

Leaving Caldwell, leaving the United States, getting good and gone and staying that way was probably going to be healthy for him.

Shit knew they had enough money to go for a century even if they never earned another penny. And although he would be sad to see the last of the King and the Brotherhood and that whole household, if it avoided war, he was prepared to leave them.

He and Trez were out of here.

For good.

As iAm went over to the sliding glass door, Catra had to yell at herself not to run after him. It all seemed like such a nightmare, everything about the evening.

He did not look back at her as he left.

And even though she could not blame him, she wanted to cry out.

Closing her eyes, she bowed her head and breathed into her palms.

“Do not tell me you fell in love with him,” s’Ex said grimly.

Forcing herself to drop her hands and address the executioner, she met his eye. “Why were you here? You couldn’t have been following me. I was careful.”

He looked away. “I am not unfamiliar with this place.”

“You have been here before?”

“You are not the only one who wishes to be free from time to time. Those two brothers owed me certain … favors, shall we say.”

When he stopped there, she sensed there was pain in him. Deep pain. And she wondered if perhaps he had not been mourning his infant in this private place, mourning the loss that had been decreed by the stars.

Staring at the proud male, she found herself forming a kinship of sorts with him. She would ne’er have guessed he was unhappy or unfulfilled in his lot, and perhaps he was not. But he had had to sacrifice his own flesh and blood for the traditions … and for her mother.

Or been forced to, because of the stars.

“I am sorry,” she said.

“Whate’er for?”

“You are well aware of what.”

It was rare that a male such as he would duck eyes to avoid a stare, but he did that now. “I am unaware of what you speak.”