“What do you expect me to say?” He walked calmly over to stand in front of me. “I love ya, baby, but you messed up something cruel, and then you went and tried to take the coward’s way out.”

I blinked rapidly, sending the tears back where they belonged, trying so hard to breathe in a gentle rhythm, but the pain of regret made my chest cave. I folded over, holding my breath.

“Look, don’t get me wrong, Ar.” He placed one hand to my back and the other around my arm, and gently made me stand straight again. “I feel for you. I do. And I hate to see you like this, but—”

“I did this to myself. I know.”

He patted my shoulder. “This too shall pass.”

I nodded up at him, forcing an odd kind of smile.

The corner of his lip pressed into his cheek and he patted my shoulder again, leaving me to find my own way out.

***

“He can’t move out,” Blade said, and I stopped walking, pinning my back to the wall in the shadows of the rounded stairwell. “We have to keep up appearances or the Upper House will start asking questions.”

“Maybe they should,” Morgaine said. “Maybe the people should know what their queen did.”

“Are you insane?” Mike jumped in. “They’ll butcher her, Morg. You know what the punishment for infidelity is.”

“Yes, but—”

“I don’t,” Emily said. “Mike, what is it—what will they do to her?”

“She could be whipped, at the very least,” Falcon informed.

“But the old favourite for Ancient Lilithian times, still in practice today,” Quaid said, “is La Brûlure de la Chasteté.”

“What’s that mean?” Em said.

“The Burn of Chastity. It’s where the victim—”

“Accused,” Morg corrected spitefully.

“The accused,” Falcon said, pausing after. I heard him swallow hard, even from all the way back here. He cleared his throat and started again. “The accused is held down on a bed, with her legs strapped into stirrups.”

“Yeah, then they heat this small iron club,” Blade said, his jagged tone suggesting hand demonstrations to go with the explanation. “And they insert it into the vagina to melt it shut.”

“The accused would often die of infection,” Falcon added.

Emily gasped. “David wouldn’t let them. There’s no way he’d—”

“He wouldn’t have a choice,” Quaid said. “Even the king and queen are bound by certain rules. If the House find out, Em, they decide her fate, not David.”

“But, surely he has some say?”

“Some, yes,” Falcon said. “But the fact remains. This needs to be swept under the rug like every other act of infidelity in the political history of mankind. There can be no leaked secrets or exposés.” He paused for a moment. “We’re not talking about a media frenzy, here. We’re talking about brutal mutilation.”

“She’d heal in six weeks,” Morgaine said.

“Morg?” Mike cut in. “Whose side are you on?”

“To be honest, I’m neutral. She did wrong, Mike. Maybe, just maybe, this time the punishment fits the crime.”

I heard a chair scrape out. “I’ll be damned if I’m gonna—”

“Sit down,” Falcon said in a slightly louder voice. “Both of you. This is counterproductive.”

Everyone in the room sighed as if the day had just been too long and they were all wrought with too many problems. And they were. And I caused it.

I slid down the wall and sat on the cold stone step, listening while they all decided my fate.

“She needs to own up to the truth, Falcon,” Morgaine said. “She can’t hide from this.”

“I get that, Morg,” he said. “I understand that it will eventually come out. All things do, but—”

“Then, as her council, we should advise her to stand tall before her people and admit her mistakes. They might be lenient,” she reasoned.

“And what if they’re not?” Blade said. “She needs to lay low until David calms down. Maybe he’ll just forgive her and all this will be over.”

A few people laughed.

“I know her better than anyone,” Emily said. “Why don’t we get her out of here for a few weeks? She can pretend to take leave, give David time to calm down, and—”

“She needs to face this head-on,” Morg said. “David won’t calm down, Emily. That’s beyond ludicrous. I’ve known him for over a hundred years. And the fact that he hasn’t beat her already is a sheer miracle, you—”

“I know him, too,” Emily yelled. “And he loves her, Morg. If he found out the House performed that sadistic ritual on her, he’d rip every last one of them—”

“See?” Morg laughed condescendingly. “You don’t know him at all, Emily. He hates Ara. If she wants to avoid such a “sadistic” ritual, then she needs to—”

“What she needs is to know she’s still got friends,” Falcon said, slamming something down on the table. Everyone shut up. “Because she’s gotta be feeling like just about the loneliest person in the world right now, and she needs to believe that, at least in our eyes, her mistake does not define her.”

“But it does define her,” Morgaine continued in the same tone, as if Falcon had said nothing. “She cheated on David. Cheated, Falcon. We can’t excuse that because we love her.”

No one said anything for a few seconds, until, in a very small voice, Mike piped up with, “I can.”

Blade laughed breathily. “As can I.”

“And I,” said Ryder.

“Yeah, same here,” Quaid said. “I got her back. She’s young, impulsive and makes some downright dumb mistakes. But she’s a good girl, Morg.”

“And that’s just it,” Falcon added. “She is just a girl. Almost every person in this room, aside from Emily, is at least five years older than her. She’s been through Hell and back again. She’s had nothing but tragedy since she turned seventeen, and she’s not had a goddamn second to process any of it. She slept with Jason,” he added, exhaling loudly after. “But I’d bet my life she’d take it back if she could.”

“Well, that’s the shitty thing about mistakes, isn’t it, Falcon?” Morg said flatly. “There’s no going back.”

“So we just let them brutalise her?” Blade said, his voice breaking.

No one had anything to say. Morgaine was right, though; I did this. Not them. I did deserve to be punished. There was no argument to be had. And my council should not have been bearing the weight of my mistake.

I stood up, dusted my butt off and composed myself into a picture of sovereignty, then walked slowly into the room. They all looked up, their faces changing when they realised I would’ve heard them.

“David wants to move out of our room,” I said calmly. “I understand that, and I’m okay with it.”

“But the House, they—”

“They’ll find out,” I said. “Yes, and I will have to stand trial for my crimes.”

“Ara, they’ll—”

“I know what they’ll do.” I walked stiffly over and sat down on my chair. “I’ll be okay, Em. I’m strong, and I’ve suffered worse.” I smiled over at Mike. “But I can’t hide from this. It will come out eventually, and—”

“But it doesn’t have to be now.” Emily placed her hand over mine. I looked down to where she now squatted on the floor beside me, her caramel eyes reaching to the deepest part of my heart where I knew she hoped to find common sense. But this couldn’t be reasoned with.

“Always do the right thing,” I said. “And let the pieces fall where they may.”

“Pieces?” she cried. “Ara, you heard what they said, what they’ll do to you.”

“And I deserve it, Emily.”

“No.” She stood up. “You made a mistake. You don’t deserve to be brutalised like that.”

I looked around the room at each of the faces. “David knows what they’ll do to me if they find out. And he knows that his moving to another room will raise questions. This is inevitable, guys.” I shrugged, holding my hands out. “You can only run from your problems for so long. They always catch up with you.”

“And they will certainly follow you wherever you go,” David said, and we all turned around to look at him; he leaned on the wall in the doorway, one hand in his pocket, his dark gaze cooling the room. “The House will know what you did. But not yet.”

“When?” Mike asked. “What are you planning, David?”

The king curled his fingertips inward, inspecting his nails. “I’m not an entirely cruel man,” he said. “When I see even the most heinous beast suffer, I feel empathy. But—” He took a stroll across the room. “I refuse to feel empathy for that.”

“David? You—”

“You will sit down, Emily Pierce, or you will suffer the queen’s fate along with her.”

Emily sat down.

“I will leave instructions with the Upper and Lower House after I’m gone.”

“Gone?” Morgaine said.

“Yes.” David stopped walking and placed both hands on the back of Morg’s chair. “Once Drake is dead—”

“You’re still going to kill him?” I gasped.

David’s eyes flicked my way once in annoyance, then he continued without answering me. “Then I will have the guards arrest her and she will bear the full weight of the law. Once she’s endured her punishment, if she does so with grace, she will be reinstated and continue to rule the Three Worlds.”

“David, you can’t—”

“I can do what I see fit, Emily,” he said through his teeth. “She will suffer the consequences of her actions, and there will be no argument. This meeting is over.”

Everyone stayed put, their mouths hung like frogs waiting for flies.

“And what about Jason?” I asked, turning in my seat to face David. “What are you going to do with him?”

“I said,” David repeated in a clipped tone. “This meeting. Is. Over.”

Forks scraped piercing sounds down china plates, while the gentle clatter of wineglasses and murmured dinner conversations gave the candlelit evening a sort of comfortable, almost homely feel, almost as if I could imagine nothing bad had happened yesterday, or as if weeks had passed instead of only hours since I told David about Jason and I.

At breakfast this morning, Margret and Walt openly discussed David’s move to a new room and how David had laughed it off, said it was nothing but a minor argument between he and I that would resolve itself in a few weeks. And now we sat at dinner, such little time having passed but with so much on my mind, that it felt like I’d never left the table after breakfast.