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“But do you mean your fidelity orand some men, I’ve discovered, apply their double standards there more than anywhere else”

Khaledthat sounded like a curse but which she io

She wished he was touching her again immediately She was a lunatic But she could feel the iers on her chin as if he’d stamped her with his heat And she throbbed everywhere else

“You will be the death of ht for a

“I’ kicked in her “The next ti blood Just so you know”

For a moment he looked almost proud, as if he approved of her bloodthirstiness, but then another shadow claimed his face, and she couldn’t read hih the world was spinning all around hier her heart no longer considered him

“What’s the h Tooher within

“Nothing at all,” he said, and she knew, somehow, that he lied “Come”

He offered her his ar hiht she should That wanted her to fight, dah she didn’t knohat for He led her back into the palace, then down the polished, glea tiain

Cleo felt the lack of his attention like a kind of grief Harsh and heavy

“This is ridiculous,” she said when they reached her door, her voice a prickle A tight scratch against the heaviness between them “You shouldn’t have asked the question if you didn’t want to hear the answer”

“The only answer I really needed was the way you caue,” he said, but there was a distance in the way he said it So beneath those words “The rest was merely curiosity”

Cleo faced him then, her back to her door, and tried to read his dark, fierce face