Chapter 20: The Night Before

Maeve's POV

The sentence would be carried out at dawn, and nobody in Highcrown slept.

I found Evander in his study at midnight, standing at the window with a cup he had not drunk from.

He had not changed his shirt.

There was dried blood on the cuff, and under it his arm was whole, with a new white seam over the old one.

I shut the door behind me and turned the key.

"She called me by a name nobody has used in twenty years," he said without turning. "And I told her she was no sister of mine."

"You haven't killed her."

"I will, at dawn."

"The court will," I said. "Not you."

"It's the same."

I crossed the room.

I put my good hand flat between his shoulder blades, and I felt him breathe in.

"Come here," I said.

He turned.

His face was raw.

I took the cup out of his hand and put it down on the desk, and I took his face between my palms, the bandaged one and the good one.

"You don't have to be the king tonight," I said.

"Then what am I?"

"Mine."

His breath caught.

I kissed him.

It was slow at first, and then it wasn't.

He pulled me against him and lifted me onto the edge of the big desk, scattering papers and a pen and the ledger of the allowance.

"Not here," he said against my mouth. "The bed..."

"Here."

I wrapped my legs around his hips and tore at his shirt, and the buttons rang across the floor.

He pushed up my skirts, and his hands went under my thighs.

I was bare underneath.

I had known I would be.

He saw it and groaned.

"You came in here without..."

"I came in here to be fucked on your desk," I said. "Keep up."

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