He could feel that beat in him like the drums of war.
But what he focused on most, just now, was that whatever else Melody was—chief among those things a liar—she was not fragile.
She was not breakable.
She was not any of the things she’d pretended to be. None of the indisputable things that had kept him in check.
Griffin felt the hold he’d had on himself crack into pieces, then disintegrate. There and then, like so much ash in the wind.
He didn’t think he’d moved, or made a sound, but he must have. Because one moment, the two women were engaged in the most elegant brawl he’d ever seen. Then next, they froze, both of their heads whipping in his direction.
And he knew that his bride could not see him. His head knew that. But his body reacted as if those lovely sea-colored eyes were moving all over him the way he knew his own gaze moved over her.
“Prince Griffin,” said her aide, not quite landing the appropriate bow.
But Griffin’s eyes were on Melody.
Who, for the first time since he’d met her, looked utterly out of her depth. He could see the difference now, and maybe one day it would be funny, how deeply she’d deceived him. How she’d played the blind girl he’d expected to see, and he’d seen only that.
But he rather doubted he would ever find anything funny again.
“Griffin,” Melody whispered. His name almost a question. Her voice shaky, and this time, not because she was acting.
He could see that clearly.
And despite himself, despite how little humor he found in this—or because of it—he laughed.
It was a dark thing, wild and stirring, bursting out from the deepest part of him.
“My poor, deluded wife,” he said, hardly aware of what he was doing, so focused was he on her. On how she stood in a fighting stance, not cowering or collapsing or trembling at all. The lies she’d told him battered at him, but now he knew the truth. He could feel that like her hands wrapped tight around his sex, as if the only thing he’d ever been was an animal. But this time, he did nothing to hold himself in check. “You should have known better. I might have been better than I pretended to be, but I was never all that good.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
And something in him roared in triumph that she sounded off balance. That she wasn’t quite so sure of him, after all. He wondered if she would try her act again. If she would cower or cringe, or do any of those other things he now saw, so clearly he couldn’t believe he’d ever fallen for it—had been fake.
Lies in the flesh.
He’d seen what he’d wanted to see. But now he saw her.
There was no going back from that. God help them both.
“You will,” he told her, menace and need warring inside him and turning into fire. “You’d better prepare yourself, Princess. Because I was happy to protect an innocent, but that’s not you, is it?”
“Griffin...” she began, but his name in her mouth only made it worse.
He heard it as an invitation he intended to take.
“I have no reason at all to protect a liar,” he told her, while the fire in him burned bright and tasted like victory. At last. “Least of all from myself.”
CHAPTER NINE
MELODY COULD FEEL a beating thing, a wild exultation this close to panic and yet not quite, and couldn’t tell if it was her heart or his.
“Leave us,” Griffin ordered Fen, his footsteps ominous against the polished floor as he moved further into the room. Melody could feel him coming like a storm. “The Princess and I need to discuss a few things. In private.”
“Perhaps it would be better if I stayed,” Fen replied.
It made a deep sort of shiver rattle its way deep into Melody’s bones. Because Fen was the least nurturing creature Melody knew, and given who she knew, that was saying something.
This could only mean it was worse than it seemed.
Her own heart beat so hard then, so loud, she thought it might leave a scar on the outside of her chest.
And still his footsteps came closer. Melody tried to imagine what Griffin must look like, bearing down on her. That beautiful face she’d felt beneath her hands taut and grim. Both of them unchained, finally, from this game they’d been playing all the while.
If the normally unflappable Fen was apprehensive, Melody should have been terrified.
But she knew that wasn’t the thing that bloomed inside her, thick and ripe.
“I’ll be fine,” she murmured to Fen. “Truly.”
She had no idea if that was true, so she did what she could to stand balanced on her bare feet. Ready for whatever might come at her—or ready to counterattack, anyway, which amounted to the same thing. She’d learned to punch and kick quickly, as all white belts did. It had taken her a great many more years to learn how to be still.
To wait.
“Godspeed, then,” Fen muttered from beside her.
Melody didn’t try to find her way back into the weak little character she’d been playing. She doubted it would work this time.
And on a deeper level, she didn’t want to.
Because she wanted him to see her for once.
Had she sensed him? Had that been why she’d felt so much fierce joy in this particular session? Why she’d jumped higher, punched better? Had she known all along he was here?
Melody knew he was here now, certainly. She could feel him as he stalked toward her, temper and heat. And she couldn’t bring herself to shrink back down into palatable size.
She had no idea what to do with the storms she could feel snap and howl around them, but she knew she couldn’t pretend any longer. It already felt like years since she’d agreed to
