Bring Me Their Hearts(65)

“I wasn’t expecting a cinfalla ending technique,” he grumbles. “I thought they stopped doing that years ago.”

“You’ve done this before, then?” I ask. “Sneak out to a Verdance parade and dance with the world’s most alluring woman?”

“Implying that’s you, of course,” he drawls.

“Who else?” I laugh. “The Crimson Lady doesn’t even come close—she’s got too many sharp angles and all red is a terrible makeup look.”

Behind the mask, his eyes narrow, but in a smiling way. Or at least I think they do. I could be seeing things, or wanting to see things. Both are equally dangerous and equally useless to the looming end point, the goal of all of this. That’s what this is, I remind myself. A goal—a means to an end. Not a dance, or a blazing night spent with a darkly handsome boy—but a plot. A ploy. A lie.

We breathe together until we even out, and then he speaks, watching the remnants of the parade pass us.

“When I was younger, Father would disguise me in peasant clothes and wear some himself. And then we’d venture to this parade and dance.”

I’m quiet. The dour, serious, witchdeath-bent King Sref, dancing? I can hardly imagine it.

“That was before Varia died,” Lucien continues. “After that…we stopped. But he was the one who taught me how to blend in with a crowd. He taught Varia, too.”

“Did he teach your prodigious stealing skills?” I tease, trying to work some light into his dark memories. He shakes his head.

“I learned those on my own. Varia always talked about it. She read these novels about a thief who stole from the rich and gave to the poor.”

“The Midnight Gifter,” I blurt. “I read those, too.”

He looks surprised. “All of them?”

“All of them. They were my favorite. A little cheesy and over the top, but a good book series is always a little of both, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps.” Lucien goes quiet, and then, “I think she secretly wanted to abandon her title of Crown Princess and become the Midnight Gifter for the rest of her life. Or at least become someone who could help the common people without consequence. She hated not being able to do anything about our people’s suffering more than anyone.”

“And you?”

He scoffs. “Before she died, I couldn’t have cared less if some orphan I didn’t know died in the street from starvation. I was young and selfish.”

“You were a child—”

“Ignorance doesn’t excuse cruelty.” He cuts me off cleanly. “I had my toys, and my puddings, and my horses. I had no care for the outside world.”

“But then she died,” I say. Lucien nods.

“And when she did, I threw myself to the streets. But unlike before, when I’d get lost in the Verdance parade, Father never came to find me. He was too wrapped up in his own grief to care about me anymore. He hired Malachite, raised him to guard me, afraid he’d lose me to witches, too. But that was the extent of his attention. The more time I spent in the streets, the more I realized there were boys exactly like me who lost sisters every day, but to stupid things—not enough bread, not enough clothes, the common cold. Things that are preventable.

“So I started stealing. Well, it’d be more accurate to say I watched other children steal. And I copied them. And then I started copying the better ones. And then I became one of the better ones.” He pushes his sweat-dewed bangs out of his eyes. “What about you? How did you learn?”

There’s an urge in me to tell him the truth. But I shrug instead. “My story is much less tragic. There wasn’t anything to do where I grew up. Collecting beautiful things made me feel better about life. In short, I learned by being selfish.”

“Don’t we all,” he murmurs. After a moment he holds up a crystal hairpin that’s oddly familiar.

“Where did you get that?” I paw at it, but he holds it up high. I step in to him, desperately grasping for it, but he keeps it just out of my reach. I lean in closer, so close I can feel the heat radiating from his chest, his smooth neck.

“From the Welcoming.” He smirks down at me. “When I bumped into you.”

I jump for it, but he holds it higher, our chests colliding roughly on the way down. Blood rushes to my cheeks and I sputter. “How did you—in front of all those people?”

“I told you—I became one of the better thieves.”

“You’ve clearly never seen Lady Y’shennria angry,” I say. “Or you’d wet yourself. And then give that pin back right away.”

“Y’shennria has dozens. I’m giving this one to that girl,” he insists.

“The one you gave the golden watch to?”

“The one and the same. She might look timid, but she knows how to haggle in Vetris’s black market. The gold she makes from my trinkets goes to keeping the younger orphans alive.”

“I was wondering why you had such a healthy urchin population in Vetris,” I muse. He extends his elbow to me like a nobleman might to a lady.

“One more walk about the city with me, then? I promise we’ll be home by curfew.”

I laugh. “You’re a liar. A very pretty liar, but a liar nonetheless.”