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When the door finally opened, I was h the silk cravat around s I didn’t try to hide it from him I just s With the black cat trotting at his heels, he ducked through the door and went about his business as if I wasn’t there He tossed his gloves onto the dresser and cracked his knuckles one at a ti me in bemusement

"You’re a feisty littlea little

"I’m not a monster" I spat out bits of cravat and rubbed my sore wrists The silk tasted too closely of hu else, a round, and To, this cat creature But Casper wasn’t "But I wouldn’t expect you to understand who I am or what I mean You’re uncivilized"

"I’ people up"

"If our roles were reversed, you wouldn’t hesitate," heme I can see it in your eyes It’s a shame, too They’d be pretty, if they weren’t so set on murder"

I chuckled, low and sweet He didn’t know the half of it But I’d been thinking I had figured out a way to get what I wanted all around My strength back, e, and, in time, his head on a silver platter

"I don’t want to murder you anymore" I smiled sweetly "I think we can help each other"

"Do you, now?" He turned his back to htI had to turn my eyes--or at least appear to Not only because I was scandalized but because despite the strange stink, he was still full of blood barely contained by warm skin As my beloved old nursemaid used to say, even a cracked teacup ht drink And this teacup was far fro jacket over the dresser and wrenched off his cravat Next ca into the corner His skin was golden, almost unheard of in my country, where ice-white was in fashion He was rown up with, and hisFine curly hair on his chest caught in the la down and down

I heard the button on his breeches and may have peeked out of idle curiosity, but he seemed to recall where he was at thatmine with a sneer Instead, he kicked his boots across the room and slammed a fist into the faded white paint on the wall Tommy Pain shot under the low bed with a hiss The cracked round and shattered to pieces, each shard reflecting the pathetic little room and us, its pathetic inhabitants

Me, a lost princess and future queen, far from home and so weak I couldn’t untie the cravat around my ankles Him, an uncivilized and fallenwhatever he was I could read rage in the tension of his back, in the white of his fists against the cru here the mirror had been Even in stillness, he was a tempest

"That’s seven years of bad luck"

"I’ve already put in three" He lightly banged his forehead against the plaster "What will be left of ain, a wealthy man" I sat up "Now, have you any more vials?"

He pulled away frolare I didn’t blink

"Please?" I added, as lass tubes out of his jacket and uncorked the first one Pinky-style, with two hands By the tith to untiedidn’t allow even my child-sized frame a decent stretch I hadn’t stood since I’d attacked hi loosely around h not to scratch

He watchedCasper made me feel self-conscious, which I deeply resented, since a princess existed only to be adainst hi froown, the height of fashion, hand-seith golden thread What irlish and left to rot in a suitcase? And yet there was soaze

I would teach him what to think of ain I offer you" I folded ether and mimicked my mother’s precise intonation "Ihunted and that I anizable, and I admit that I know little of the squalid life outside of the Ice Palace You will disguise uard You will help dom, and you will help me depose her If we are successful, you will be court musician to the Tsarina of Freesia, coain Whatever you are, you will have whatever you need Whatever you wish"

"Whatever I wish?" One eyebroent up, and a strange recognition shuddered throughbetween us, the shards of the hter than snow