The Villainess Woke Up Mid-Confession novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Before Dawn

The garden gate creaked behind them.

All three of them spun round.

Kyrian stood in the gap in the wall with his sword belt buckled on over his coat and his breath smoking.

"That wasn't two hours," Ravielle said.

"It was one and a half. I rounded up."

He looked at Liliane's ink-black sleeve, at Hanne, at the brass seal in Ravielle's hand.

"What happened?"

"My sister robbed our cousin," Ravielle said. "It was beautiful. You'd have wept."

Liliane went pink to her freckles.

Ravielle held the seal out to him on her palm.

He took it, turned it to the moon, and his jaw went tight.

Liliane spoke before Ravielle could.

"They went out by the north gate a quarter of an hour ago," she said. "The one in front rides a grey with a white stocking. He's the one who whistles."

Kyrian didn't ask how she knew.

"The north road takes eight days in winter," he said. "If they change horses at every post."

"Can you beat them?"

"My men know the passes." His mouth twisted. "Everyone does now. We'll go over the top of the ridge and come down behind them. I'll need a night to gather twelve riders who can do it. We leave at first light."

"And then?"

"Then I bring him south in chains, alive, and he tells the Emperor whose face he saw."

He gave the seal back to Ravielle.

She turned and put it in Liliane's ink-stained hand.

"Keep it," she said. "He'll search my rooms. He'd never think you had the nerve."

Liliane closed her fingers over it.

She looked at Ravielle for a moment.

Then she gathered her ruined skirts and went into the house without a word, and Hanne followed her with a lamp.

Kyrian and Ravielle stood alone by the black water.

"Go home and sleep," he said. "I'll send word from the first post."

"No."

"Ravielle."

"Take me home with you," she said.

He went very still.

The frost was white on his shoulders, on the hilt of his sword.

He took her cold hand and turned it over and looked at the ink on her fingers.

"Two hours ago you were angry at the woman who wore your face," he said quietly.

"Two hours ago I was jealous of her," Ravielle said. "Now all I can think is that she never got to go home. Three years in my rooms, and nobody in this city even knew her name."

"I didn't," he said. "I asked her once. She said it belonged to somewhere I'd never see."

"She kept my heart going," Ravielle said. "You kept her alive. She was braver than I've ever been. I'm grateful to her. I'll be grateful to her till I die."

She stepped close.

"And none of that is why I'm asking."

"Then why?"

"Because I want you," she said. "Me. Not the one who apologized. The one who's going to make your life extremely difficult for the next forty years. I'm not choosing you over her. I'm just choosing you."

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