Chapter Twenty-Five
Arden woke to bright sunlight and an unfamiliar bed, but even before he opened his eyes, memories of the previous night filtered back to him—Mavis spread out beneath him, naked and flushed; Mavis writhing against him, her determined fingers guiding his cock to where she was wet, warm, and so tight he feared he would lose himself the instant he slipped inside her; Mavis’s voice, breathy in his ear as shudders of pleasure racked through her body.
I love you still. I never stopped. I’m yours.
The memory had him hard again, reaching for her, but the bed was empty.
“Arden.”
He blinked his eyes open, knowing right away that something was wrong.
That was Mavis’s voice but not the way he’d heard it the night before, undone and wild with want.
Instead, it was as if there was a thick wall of glass between them; he could hear the words she spoke clear as day, but she was unreachable.
She was just out of arm’s reach—sitting on a calico-upholstered armchair beside the bed, already dressed in a lavender dress edged in white lace.
Her spine was straight, chin raised, hands folded primly on her lap.
She wasn’t the Mavis he’d come to know; this was closer to Delphinia Lindcourt or Arabella Strickland or any number of other names she’d called herself over the years.
Arden could see the seams of her mask where it met skin, but that didn’t mean he could tear it off.
He knew then that he’d lost her, but he refused to accept it.
“Come back to bed, Mavis.” He reached a hand to her, but when she kept her hands in her lap, he let his arm fall back to the bed. “If you try to say that last night was a mistake—”
“I won’t.” She turned her face away from him. “It wasn’t a mistake, but it can’t happen again.”
Arden didn’t answer—he couldn’t, given the tension that had taken up residence in his jaw, making it clench tight. “I love you, Mavis—and you love me, you said as much.”
“You really should know better than to believe anything I say by now, Arden.” Her voice was cloaked in frost. “I say what I need to say to get what I want. Last night, I wanted you, and you needed me to love you.”
Arden stared at her for a moment. Some part of him thought she was lying, but he didn’t know for sure. With her, he would never know for sure. The realization cut to the bone.
“I don’t believe you,” he told her, aware even as he said the words that they weren’t entirely true.
Mavis finally looked at him, and he immediately wished she wouldn’t. The pity in her eyes was too much.
“You don’t know me, Arden,” she said softly. “I’m doing you a favor.”
“How do you figure that?” he asked with a scoff.
“Because you love me. Or rather, you think you do. And I’m choosing to shatter that illusion, which is more than I did for you five years ago.
If I let it linger, let you believe my lies, let you give up everything for me a second time .
. .” She trailed off, swallowing the end of the sentence, but Arden understood what she was trying to say all the same.
The love he had for the woman he believed to be Arabella Strickland turned out to be a mirage.
What he felt for Mavis now eclipsed it entirely, but he also knew he could love her more.
If he had the time. If she let him. And she was right—in not letting him, she was being kind.
Because she was never going to love him back. He doubted she was even capable of it.
But just because she was doing him a kindness didn’t mean he had to be grateful to her for it.
“You’re right,” he told her after a moment, the words coming out rough edged. “I don’t know you at all. But do you want to know what I think?”
She didn’t answer, but he continued all the same.
“I think you don’t know who you are either. I think you’ve wrapped yourself in so many illusions over the years that any trace of you is long gone. All that’s left are lies.”
Mavis went still, then rose to her feet and clasped her hands in front of her. “I told you before, Arden. I know who and what I am, and I won’t apologize for it.”
She started toward the door, and Arden didn’t find his voice until she reached it, her hand on the doorknob.
“So this is it, then?” he asked, his voice coming out strangled and tight.
She kept her back to him but nodded once. “This is it. You’ll get your aunt’s inheritance. Rafe, Leif, and I will get our money.” She hesitated before looking over her shoulder, her full mouth twisted into a jagged smile. “We all get what we want.”
Just a few hours ago, Arden only wanted her. And now? He no longer knew what he wanted.
Without another word, she was gone, slipping from the room and closing the door softly behind her, leaving Arden utterly alone.
Despite his invisibility, Mavis knew the moment Arden passed through the hotel suite.
Sitting at the breakfast table with Rafe and Leif, she covered the hitch in her breath by lifting her coffee cup to her mouth, barely aware of the liquid scalding her tongue.
She seemed to be the only one to notice his presence—Rafe didn’t look up from his morning paper, and Leif didn’t pause in shoving a forkful of scrambled eggs into his mouth.
Mavis tried to appear as unaffected as they were, but it became all the more difficult when Arden paused behind her.
He didn’t make a sound, didn’t touch her, but she felt his presence as keenly as if he had.
Come back to bed, Mavis.
In another life, she might have heeded that invitation, might be there still, tangled up with him under the covers in their own secret world, but that was not her life.
He was not hers, no matter what unwise words might have slipped past her lips last night.
She let him believe she was heartless and cruel and selfish, but she knew that breaking his heart was the most selfless thing she’d ever done in her life and some part of her would always regret it.
“You could have offered the man coffee, at least,” Rafe commented when the quiet closing of the door echoed down the hall.
Rafe’s face was still hidden behind the Garlin Gazette, so Mavis had to stare at the front page, the stern face of the city’s mayor staring back at her beneath the headline: Levitt denies bribe amid mounting speculation.
She reached for a clever retort to volley back, but all she managed was “Fuck off, Rafe.”
The newspaper lowered, Rafe’s dark-brown eyes peering at her above the mayor’s photograph, his eyebrows raised. “Now, now, that’s no way for Delphinia Lindcourt to speak.”
Delphinia Lindcourt. That identity and all the aliases that had come before had always meant freedom for Mavis, a way out of the life she’d been born into, an escape from the Low City and Strall and Uriah Minstead, even if only for a few months at a time.
Now, though, the name was a pair of manacles around her wrists.
I think you’ve wrapped yourself in so many illusions over the years that any trace of you is long gone. All that’s left are lies.
She quickly shoved Arden’s words away.
“Eat your breakfast, Magpie.” Leif’s voice was softer than his brother’s as he nodded toward the plate in front of her.
Mavis looked down at the wealth of food, the runny gold-yolked eggs, the crispy marbled bacon, the perfectly toasted bread slathered with fresh jam.
Mavis had never been one to turn down a meal, knowing never to take for granted when the next one would come, but now she pushed the plate away.
“You did the right thing, Mavis,” Rafe said quietly, setting his newspaper aside.
Mavis knew she was right, but she wasn’t done being noble quite yet.
“It’s time to go home,” she told them, relieved the words came out strong and level.
Rafe frowned. “We can’t do that until you get rid of that stain on your hand.”
Mavis looked down at her palm, the blue stain covering half her hand now.
She’d spent half the night formulating a story that would convince Rafe and Leif to leave her here, but now it stuck in her throat.
She took a breath to steel herself—it didn’t matter if Arden hated her, it didn’t matter if Rafe and Leif would never forgive her.
As long as they were safe from Thaddeus Mayles, nothing else mattered at all.
“Oriana is going to accept Arden’s proposal today.
” She forced her voice to come out level and casual as she closed her hand into a fist and dropped it to her side.
“And after that, it’s just a matter of keeping up the charade with Thaddeus until Arden inherits his aunt’s estate and I can break the engagement.
There’s no need for you to hang around—I’ll meet you in Strall. ”
She didn’t like lying to Rafe and Leif, but she was relieved when they didn’t call her out for it.
“Are you certain?” Rafe said instead, his attention back on the paper in front of him.
Mavis forced a smile. “Absolutely. You two can go.”
Leif gave a snort. “We’re not going to leave you, Mavis.”
Though she was touched by his devotion, she forced herself to roll her eyes. “Don’t you trust me?”
Rafe glanced at her over the top of his paper. “Of course we do. How could you doubt it?”
She didn’t, but she needed them to believe she did—for their sakes.
“For the last few weeks, the two of you have been treating me like some fragile, weak-willed child. I know what needs to be done, and I am perfectly capable of doing it alone. In fact, I’d do it a lot better without both of you peering over my shoulder with judgment in your eyes. ”
“Not judgment.” Leif sounded so hurt Mavis had to resist the urge to apologize. “Only concern.”
“Concern I don’t need. There’s nothing left for you to do here now, and I .
. .” She trailed off, swallowing. “I just want to be alone for a bit.” That was so far from the truth she wanted to laugh, but Rafe and Leif believed it.
And why wouldn’t they? For as long as she’d known them, she had always thrived alone.
“It’ll only be a couple of weeks at the most,” she added with a reassuring smile.
Rafe cleared his throat, exchanging a furtive look with his brother before looking back at Mavis. “If you’re sure.”
Mavis smiled. “I’m sure.”
That, at the very least, was the truth.