So I gave him nothing.

I had been Larke Bly before I was ever Marius’s wife — my father’s daughter, raised by a man who taught me that the loudest person in the room is almost never the one who wins it — and Larke Bly knew how to wait.

I smiled through the whole gala getting ready.

I let him fix my necklace.

I let him think the trap was closing on schedule, because a trap only works on someone who doesn’t know it’s there, and I had just become the one thing his entire plan could not survive: a target who had seen the whole board.

Chapter 6 — The Gala