I guess it’s time.”While Cress’s thoughts continued to churn through the horrible things that could happen to her, she felt herself being suddenly spun around and dipped backward, a supportive arm scooping beneath her back. She yelped and caught herself on Thorne’s shoulder.Then he was kissing her.

You’re my princess, right? You were always going to be my princess, no matter what you were born, no matter who your dad married.

From this day forward, you will be my sun at dawn and my stars at night, and I vow to love and cherish you for all our days.

You’re perfect,” he said, finishing his thought as if she hadn’t interrupted. “I don’t care if you see dead wolves and turn into a living ice sculpture when you’re having a bad day. I don’t care if I have an imprint of your teeth on my shoulder. I don’t care if you’re … fixed.” He spat the word like it tasted bad. “I want you to be safe and happy. That’s all.

Was it all in my head? A Lunar trick?”Her stomach twisted. “No.” She shook her head, fervently. How to explain that she hadn’t had the gift before? That she couldn’t have used it against him? “I would never lie—”The words faded. She had lied. Everything he knew about her had been a lie.“I’m so sorry,” she finished, the words falling lamely in the open air.Kai peeled his eyes away, finding some place of resignation off in the glistening garden. “You’re even more painful to look at than she is.

Is that . . . has it all been for that? The tea party, the letters, what you said at the festival . . . all of it, no more than an attempt to steal my heart so you could take it back to your queen?’‘The easiest way to steal something,’ Jest murmured, ‘is for it to be given willingly.

But what I was really thinking was that you talk about him like...like you talk about a piece of decadent chocolate cake.

Love is a conquest! Love is war!

She kept her head high, even as her eyes stung, even as panic filled her vision with warnings and precautions.It was not her fault he had liked her.It was not her fault she was cyborg. She would not apologize.