Page 74 of Violet Made of Thorns

Alone in my tower, seeing all and holding on to nothing.

Slowly, I stop visiting Nadiya’s quarters for these discussions.

Not like they need me anyway. Not when Dante is usually two steps ahead analyzing the latest numbers and movements, and Cyrus and Nadiya are busy flirting through their fated romance. Soldiers have already been dispatched to the borderlands to combat the tide of beasts and seek out the witch. The court is aflutter over Lady Raya’s absence; we’re hoping Nadiya can maintain a sickly ruse until the wedding.

I didn’t think anyone would notice my own absence until a note arrives at my windowsill carried by Cyrus’s falcon that says:Meet today? New sightings in the Fifth Dominion.

I toss it in the fireplace. I’ll meet them if I feel like it.

I decide quickly that I don’t feel like it.

I go the Moon District instead, in plainclothes, with a scoop of the coins I earned from my readings. Chatter about the beasts and the wedding exist here too, but to a lesser degree, and it’s nearly peace. I buy trinkets from the marketplace—ceramic figurines, candy bracelets, a nutshell that cracks open to reveal a birth-constellation fortune—silly things I could never buy when I was a child. I sit at the fancy teahouse near the Arts District that every visitingdignitary raves about, and while it’s excellent, it’s also too fussy. I fill the rest of my stomach with skewers of fried street food and lick my fingers clean.

When I’m done with my trip, I take a carriage back to the palace, and the prince returns to mind with the swiftness of a weed.

I want to crumple his note and throw it into the fire again.

Cyrus and I have settled into some pattern of functional interaction, with an unspoken agreement to keep things unspoken. When he discusses plans, he includes me in them, as if there isn’t a future where I’m not Seer here. We’re all bound by mutual deception now, with Nadiya as our unlikely link.

Still, I trace his gaze from across the room. Sometimes I want to kiss him and sometimes I want to ruin him, but most of the time, I want those actions to be one and the same.

The ball was not long ago, and the wedding is not far in the future. Everything is happening breathlessly fast this summer, but it will get better soon. These feelings will go away, along with all this prophecy.

As I ascend my tower, I fish out the key to the divining room. When I approach the door, I find it already unlocked.

A thief? No one’s been so bold in years.

I rush inside and find no one rummaging.

Instead, leaning against the divining table, is Cyrus, waiting.

His arms are crossed and his legs are outstretched. No fine royal attire adorns him, just the loose shirt and ridingbreeches he wears when he has a rare day to himself—not that he has those anymore.

“You didn’t respond,” he says.

Take a hint,I think of snapping, but my mouth is dry. He’s claimed the one spot that best frames his features in the honeyed light of late afternoon. The tug of his collar is a little lower than it should be and a sweep of hair frays over his brow in an uncommon display of dishevelment. It’s appealing.

A little too appealing. I narrow my eyes. “How long have you been posed like that?”

Cyrus pushes himself off the table. “I heard you come up the stairs.”

“Half an hour?”

“Ten minutes.” Which means twenty.

Everything about Cyrus screams premeditated seduction—he is here for a reason, and he didn’t earn his title of Prince Charming from nothing. But if I don’t move, he’ll think I’m scared, so I force my legs forward. “What do you want?”

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

“I don’tneedto be around you.”

“You don’t need to do a lot of things that you do.” His gaze is hooded. “Have you been jealous of how I treat Nadiya?”

I bark a laugh.

“I only want to make her feel comfortable.”

“I really don’t care. What do you want?” I ask again. That question—the real, underlying question—remains unanswered between us no matter how many times it comesup.

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