Page 51 of A Dance of Lies

Except I do.

“How long ago?” I say, voice frail.

“It was nine years ago. We were young, careless. Barely eighteen. Kids who thought we were in love.” It looks like he wants to say something more, but his jaw tightens, as if he’s screwing it shut.

Nine years. That was long before I came to Illian’s court. I was sixteen and still working at the Melune while Copelan was here, performing at the Gathering and falling in love.

“I’ve never been in love.” I don’t know why I say it. Perhaps because it feels so far from reach.

Copelan releases my hands, and cold air washes over my palms. They feel empty, just like the heart that’s being hollowed out in my chest. I may have found a way to save Gustav, but for how long? And what will Illian have me do next?

Knuckles brush my cheek, tenderly pulling me from the misery of my thoughts. When I glance at Copelan, my pain is there, reflected in his gaze.

But his expression shifts—subtly, like a darkening sky. He tucks an errant curl behind my ear. I pull in a breath. Half the time, he looks like he wants to shove me off the island, but now . . . now I go utterly still because he doesn’t move his hand. He lets it linger by the shell of my ear.

It drops to my neck.

My throat bobs as his thumb grazes my jaw, my clavicle. It’s calloused, but that roughness feels . . . good.

“Copelan,” I breathe. It comes out hoarse.

His thumb lingers there for a moment before he lets it fall, like it pains him to remove it. He purses his lips before saying, almost reluctantly, “I’ll send for a sleeping tonic. Take it after your meal. You should rest. Laurent will check on you this evening.” He slides off the bed and draws my curtains to a close. “Recover with haste, Vasalie.” A little smile curls his lips as he reaches the door.

“Wait.”

He pauses, a hand on the frame. I shouldn’t keep him; I know it. But I say it anyway. “Stay. Just for a little while.”

Copelan hesitates. His eyes shift between mine, searching for something. He must find it, because he comes back, settling down next to me, careful not to shake the bed. He rests his large back against the headboard.

Tentatively, I take his hand. I examine it, twisting and turning it, running my nails along his palm. He lets me.

“Tell me more about you,” he whispers.

“What do you mean?”

“Your family. Not your father, but the good things. Your childhood. What Brisendale is really like.”

Home.

I reach back in my mind, searching for a time where I was happy.

And for the first time in so long, I let myself remember. The good, instead of the bad.

The first time I saw Emilia, not the last.

I’d been hiding in my mother’s old closet. My father was downstairs. If he had known I was missing from his wedding reception—or that I had skipped the ceremony—he hadn’t cared.

I don’t remember my mother, but there was something about the smell of her gowns back then, familiar like a lullaby I knew by heart. So I stayed there, curled up in a heap in her closet, resolute, uncaring; I didn’t need a stepmother, and certainly not the prissy, haughtyactress my father met on his latest trip, or so my lady’s maid had told me. Jealousy, I later realized.

But then a woman, no more than twenty-five, barreled into my hiding place, a vision of white velvet and fur, pearls dripping from her ears like snowdrops.Can I hide here a while?she’d asked, and when I nodded, she breathed a sigh of relief and climbed in with me. Then she pulled a basket of pastries from her skirt, telling me she’d liberated them from the reception.You have to eat some of these,she’d said.Because if you don’t, I’m going to eat them all, every last one. And then I’ll feel awful, because I’ve already eaten two slices of cake and sugar doesn’t exactly agree with me, because . . . look. Just look at my hands. I’m shaking like a wet dog.

We ate until we made ourselves sick, our fingers sticky and dresses splattered in powdered sugar, and it wasn’t until I heard my father shouting for his missing wife that I realized who she was.

I don’t want a new mother,I’d said.

She’d answered,I know, but how about a friend?

A smile breaks out at the memory, so wide it hurts.