Page 151 of A Dance of Lies

But it has nothing to do with his word, and everything to do with whatever bargain they struck after working together for so long. He didn’t want to risk losing Maksim’s help. Or maybe because Maksim knew his plans and could expose him at any moment.

And my father—he didn’t want me tarnished. I was insurance.

Leverage.

Property.

I feel Illian’s palm against my cheek, but I remove myself from my body. Distantly, my father calls for celebration, but his words sound as though they are underwater. Figures dance, warping in and out of sight. Music soaks the air like mist.

I’m being pulled to the dance floor.

“You really knew this whole time?” I hear myself ask dazedly. Flatly.

Illian leads me into a waltz, his hand crawling up my waist. When he leans in, his breath is a cool wisp against my neck. “It was meant to be, don’t you see?”

Because I had fallen right into his lap.

“But why, why didn’t you—”

“Wed you sooner? Honestly, Vastianna, you made it much harder on yourself. If you hadn’t run off, you would have been welcomed into my palace instead of starving on the streets.” He spins me around, then guides me back into his arms, and there’s a possessiveness to the way he holds me. “I am not so cruel as he. Your father wanted you in my court right away—wanted the deal sealed. But I would not have married you until you were sixteen. You could have had three years of learning, pampering, and yet you chose to flee.”

Was it really kindness, I wonder, or more because he needed to accomplish something, first?

“Nonetheless, the hand of fate stepped in. Guided you to me in that theater. And that is precisely the magic of it. It was destiny, as if written among the stars themselves.”

He looks at me as if I should agree with him. As if I should thank him for it.

“Unfortunately, by the time I confirmed who you were—that it wasyouwho were meant to be mine—our plans to unite Miridran while he took Rurik’s place were delayed, as I had yet to prove that Estienne was unfit for the throne—a feat that took far longer than I had expected. And of course I still had to handle my headache of a younger brother.”

Because Anton wouldn’t just die.

“But I alerted your father, who agreed to honor our initial agreement—one we struck at the very Gathering where my despicable father split my country from beneath me. I was promised Miridran in its entirety, and I was given a paltry third. Rurik even denied me Aesir’s hand because of it.”

And my father saw his opportunity with a young, devastated prince.

“The general’s offer was too good to pass up,” he says, confirming my line of thoughts. “I would reclaim what I lost, he would be king. I would have my Brisendali princess along with a marriage that would bind our kingdoms in mutual prosperity. Of course you disappearedafter that. But as much as I would have wanted us to wed once I finally found you, we couldn’t until we had what we needed. My father had made it impossible to locate anyone who had witnessed Estienne’s birth, which would prove he was illegitimate—a fact I had long since known, thanks to my mother. It was by fate alone that we finally located Annais.”

“And in the meantime, you threw me into a cell,” I spit. It could have been even longer, had he not found Annais. How long would he have left me there?

“It was not so simple,” he says. “The night of Lord Sarden’s wedding, during our promenade, I asked you a question. Do you remember what it was, Vastianna?”

I want to shove him away and damn the consequences.

But then—

Lord Sarden’s wedding.

It had been one of the happiest nights of my life.

The wedding itself was pleasant, but it was only after the revelry turned rambunctious that Illian offered to escort me into the gardens for some air.

It returns to me now, the way moonlight cut swathes through the evening fog, setting a scene that felt like a dream as we drifted between hedgerows. Oh, how my heart had swelled to have a moment alone with him. He’d walked beside me, his hands clasped neatly behind his back, and I remember itching to free those hands. To grab them, cradle them within my own, if only to thank him for bringing me. For letting me accompany him, laugh with him, and for everything else, too—all the ways he had changed my life.

Then he had turned to face me, a solemnity to his gaze.Is it better,he had asked,to suffer for a reward guaranteed, or gamble with the risk of losing it altogether?

This reward,I had asked.How great is it?

Invaluable,he’d responded.Beyond measure. One could equate it to happiness eternal.