His shoulders pulled back. “I suppose we’re both putting on the performances of our lives.”

His accusatory tone made my anger spark into a fire. “Performance? Is that what you call it? You lied to me. Your life’s complicated. That’s what you told me. Complicated?”

“What are you dredging up? Last night or Terravin?”

“You act as if it happened ten years ago! You have such an interesting way with words. Your life isn’t complicated. You’re the blazing crown prince of Dalbreck! You call that a complication? But you went on and on about growing melons and tending horses and how your parents were dead. You shamelessly told me you were a farmer!”

“You claimed you were a tavern maid!”

“I was! I served tables and washed dishes! Have you ever grown a melon in your life? Yet you piled on lie after lie, and it never occurred to you to tell me the truth.”

“What choice did I have? I heard you call me a princely papa’s boy behind my back! One you could never respect!”

My mouth fell open. “You spied on me?” I whirled around, shaking my head in disbelief, crossing the room, then whipping back to face him. “You spied? Your duplicities never end, do they?”

He took an intimidating step closer. “Maybe if a certain tavern maid had bothered to tell me the truth first, I wouldn’t have felt that I had to hide who I was!”

I matched him step for angry step. “Maybe if a self-important prince had bothered to come see me before the wedding as I had asked, we wouldn’t be here now at all!”

“Is that so? Well, maybe if someone had asked with an ounce of diplomacy instead of commanding like a spoiled royal bitch, I would have come!”

I shook with rage. “Maybe someone was too scared out of her wits to properly choose her words for His Royal Pompous Ass!”

We both stood there, our chests heaving with fury, becoming something neither of us had been with the other before. The royal son and the royal daughter of two kingdoms that had only warily trusted each other.

I was suddenly sick with my words. I hated every one and wanted to take them back. I felt my blood pool at my feet. “I was afraid, Rafe,” I whispered. “I asked you to come because I was never so afraid in my life.”

I watched his angry flush drain away too. He swallowed and gently drew me into his arms, then tenderly, his lips grazed my forehead. “I’m sorry, Lia,” he whispered against it. “I’m so sorry.”

I wasn’t sure if he was sorry for his angry words or that he hadn’t come to me all those months ago when he received my note. Maybe both. His thumb strummed the ridges of my spine. All I wanted was to memorize the feel of his body pressed to mine and erase every word we had just said.

He took my hand and slowly kissed my knuckles one at a time, just as he’d done back in Terravin, but now I thought, This is Prince Jaxon Tyrus Rafferty kissing my hand, and I realized it mattered not one whit to me. He was still the person I had fallen in love with, crown prince or farmer. He was Rafe, and I was Lia, and everything else that we were to other people didn’t matter to us. I didn’t need to fall in love with him again. I had never fallen out.

I slid my hands beneath his vest, feeling the muscles of his back. “They’ll come,” I whispered against his chest. “Your soldiers will come, and we’ll get out of this. Together, just like you said.” I remembered that he’d said two of them spoke the language.

I leaned back so I could see his face. “Do you speak Vendan too?” I asked. “I forgot to find out last night.”

“Only a few words, but I’m catching on to certain ones quickly. Fikatande idaro, tabanych, dakachan wrukash.”

I nodded. “The choice words always come first.”

He chuckled, and his smile transformed his face. My eyes stung. I wanted that smile to stay there forever, but I had to move on to more urgent but bleaker details I needed to share. I told him there were things I had learned that he and his men would need to know.

We sat down opposite each other at the table that held the basin, and I told him everything, from the Komizar’s threats to me after everyone else had left the room, to the stolen cargo down in Council Wing Square, to my conversation with Aster and my suspicion that the patrols were being systematically slaughtered by the Vendan army. They were hiding something. Something important.

Rafe shook his head. “We’ve always had skirmishes with bands of Vendans, but this does seem different. I’ve never seen organized troops like the ones we encountered, but even six hundred armed soldiers is something that can be easily quashed by either of our kingdoms once they know what they’re dealing with.”

“What if there’s more than six hundred?”

He leaned back in his chair and rubbed the bristle on his chin. “We haven’t seen any evidence of that, and it takes some level of prosperity to train and support a large army.”

This was true. Supporting the Morrighese army was a constant drain on the treasury. But even though it brought me some relief to think the army we encountered could be dealt with, I still felt doubt roosting in my gut.

I moved on, telling him about the jehendra, the man who put the talisman around my neck, and the women who measured me for clothes. “They were unusually attentive, Rafe. Kind, even. It was strange in comparison to everyone else. I wonder if maybe they—”

“Like you?”

“No. It’s more than that,” I said, shaking my head. “I think that maybe they wanted to help me. Maybe help us?” I chewed the corner of my lip. “Rafe, there’s something else I haven’t told you.”