I was the provocation.”

The cold that went through me then was different from any I’d felt all night.

Because I understood, in that instant, that the affair itself had been part of the trap.

I had spent months grieving Ferdinand’s betrayal as a betrayal — believing, at least, that the thing between him and Ravenna was real, that he had at minimum genuinely wanted her, that the humiliation of being left for another woman was true even if it was cruel.

And now Ravenna was telling me it had never even been that.

The affair had been staged.