“Having fun?”

Maven enters alone, his presence oddly small in comparison to the figure he cuts on the throne. His Sentinels must be close, though, just outside the study. He’s not foolish enough to go anywhere without them. With one hand he gestures, sweeping the Arvens from the room. They go swiftly, quiet as mice.

“I don’t have much else for amusement,” I say when they disappear. For the thousandth time today, I curse the presence of the manacles. Without them, Maven would be as dead as his mother. Instead, they force me to tolerate him in all his disgusting glory.

He grins at me, enjoying the dark joke. “Good to see not even I can change you.”

To that I have no response at all. I can’t count the ways Maven has changed me, and destroyed the girl I used to be.

As I suspected, he flounces to the desk and sits with a cool, practiced grace. “I must apologize for my rudeness, Mare.” I think my eyes bug out of my head, because he laughs. “Your birthday was more than a month ago, and I didn’t get you anything.” As with the Arvens, he gestures, motioning for me to take a seat in front of him.

Surprised, shaken, still numb from my little performance, I do as he commands. “Trust me,” I mutter, “I’m fine without whatever new horror you plan to gift to me.”

His smile widens. “You’ll like this, I promise.”

“Somehow I don’t believe that.”

Grinning, he reaches into a drawer of his desk. Without ceremony, he tosses me a scrap of silk. Black, one half of it embroidered with red and gold flowers. I snatch it up greedily. Gisa’s handiwork. I run it between my fingers. It still feels smooth and cool, though I expect something slimy, corrupted, poisoned by Maven’s possession. But every twist of thread is a piece of her. Perfect in its fierce beauty, flawless, a reminder of my sister and our family.

He watches me turn the silk over and over. “We took it off you when we first apprehended you. While you were unconscious.”

Unconscious. Imprisoned in my own body, tortured by the weight of the sounder.

“Thank you,” I force out stiffly. As if I have any reason to thank him for anything.

“And—”

“And?”

“I offer you one question.”

I blink at him, confused.

“You may ask one question, and I will answer it truthfully.”

For a second, I don’t believe him.

I’m a man of my word, when I want to be. He said that once, and stands by it. It really is a gift, if he holds to his promise.

The first question rises without thought. Are they alive? Did you really leave them there, and let them get away? It almost slips past my lips before I think better of wasting my question. Of course they got away. If Cal were dead, I would know it. Maven would still be gloating, or someone would have said something. And he is far too concerned with the Scarlet Guard. If the others had been captured after me, he would know more and fear less.

Maven tips his head, watching me think as a cat watches a mouse. He’s enjoying this. It makes my skin crawl.

Why give me this? Why even let me ask? Another question almost wasted. Because I know the answer to this too. Maven is not who I thought he was, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know parts of him. I can guess what this is, as much as I want to be wrong. It’s his version of an explanation. A way to make me understand what he’s done and why he continues to do it. He knows what question I will eventually summon the courage to ask. He is a king, but a boy too, alone in a world of his own making.

“How much of it was her?”

He doesn’t flinch. He knows me too well to be surprised. A more foolish girl would dare to hope—would believe him a puppet to an evil woman, now abandoned, now adrift. Continuing on a course he has no idea how to change. Luckily, I’m not that stupid.

“I was slow to walk, you know.” He isn’t looking at me anymore, but at the blue flag above us. Adorned in white pearls and cloudy gems, a rich thing doomed to collect dust in Elara’s memory. “The doctors, even Father, they told Mother I would be fine in my own time. It would happen one day. But ‘one day’ wasn’t fast enough for her. She couldn’t be the queen with the crippled, slow son. Not after Coriane gave the kingdom a prince like Cal, always smiling and talking and laughing and perfect. She had my nurse discarded, blamed her for my shortcomings, and took it upon herself to make me stand. I don’t remember it, but she told me the story so many times. She thought it showed how much she loved me.”

Dread pools in my stomach, though I don’t understand why. Something warns me to get up, to walk from this room and into the waiting arms of my guards. Another lie, another lie, I tell myself. Artfully woven, as only he can do. Maven cannot look at me. I taste shame on the air.

His perfect eyes made of ice gloss over, but I’ve long hardened myself to his tears. The first gets stuck in his dark lashes, a wobbling drop of crystal.

“I was a baby, and she hammered her way into my head. She made my body stand, and walk, and fall. She did it every day, until I cried when she entered a room. Until I learned to do it myself. Out of fear. But that would not do either. A baby crying whenever his mother held him?” He shakes his head. “Eventually she took the fear away too.” His eyes darken. “Like so many other things.

“You ask how much of it was me,” he whispers. “Some. Enough.”

But not all.

I can’t stand this any longer. With unbalanced motions, tipped by the weight of my manacles and the sick clenching of my heart, I clamber from the chair.