Reluctantly, one corner of his mouth pulled up. The half smile creased his lean cheek. “The movie wasn’t that bad. Didn’t it win an Academy Award for special effects?”

“It was terrible,” she said with emphasis. “It took forever to film. I couldn’t sleep without you, and the director was always mad at me because I kept forgetting my lines. If I could have gotten out of my contract, I would have, and to hell with my professional reputation. I hated every minute of it.”

He finished washing her wounds, eased the edges of her top together and carefully buttoned it up again. “Where are you going with this?”

She took another fragment of his T-shirt and a fresh bottle of water and began to work on him, washing the dirt and the blood from his chest and shoulders and cleaning out the wounds that hadn’t healed.

She gave him a crooked smile. “I was consumed with you. The mere thought of going on a date with someone else was irritating and distasteful to me. Yes, I was asked out a couple of times, but I didn’t have the time, not physically and not emotionally, and I certainly didn’t have the interest. I don’t know where you got your information from, Julian, but I didn’t cheat on you. Not even with a kiss. Not from the moment you walked up to me at my mom’s house, the night of the Masque.”

He bowed his head, and while he didn’t say anything, for once he wasn’t rejecting her outright or snapping at her, but he was actually listening intently to everything she said.

She told him softly, “I just wanted to tell you all of that, and this time, I didn’t want to make it about me or how you hurt my feelings. I wanted to make it about you. You deserve to know that I thought you were worth it. I can only imagine how I would have felt if someone had convinced me that you had cheated on me, and I’m sorry you had to go through that. That’s all.”

He took her hand with the washcloth and held it, as he studied it. Silence pounded in her ears with the rhythm of her own heartbeat. Then, with a gentle squeeze on her fingers, he eased her hand into her lap and turned away.

Okay, then. She hadn’t really expected anything else.

It had taken twenty years and serious exhaustion and blood loss, but at least now she felt like she had said what she needed to say to him without shouting or fighting. Over the last several hours, the message had grown into something more generous and honest than she would have believed possible.

Maybe that could be cathartic for both of them.

Blinking tears out of her eyes, she tossed the used rag away. Maybe now she really could let go of her bitterness, figure out a way to get over him and move on.

Of course, that was provided they managed to survive getting out of here.

How much weight, Julian wondered, should you give to an old lie?

People lied all the time, and they did it for so many reasons. Self-protection, self-gain. Often it was with the best of intentions, to avoid hurting someone else’s feelings. Hell, he lied without compunction whenever he needed to, or he spun the truth in such a way that it suited him, like he had done in the press conference about the multiple homicide on Justine’s estate.

But this wasn’t just any lie — it was a lie that had stabbed him to the core and had had a pivotal effect on his life.

And he simply didn’t know anymore how much weight he should give to it. He felt adrift, confused again. He was tired of carrying his anger around. It felt heavy, cold and poisonous.

In the meantime, Melly was here in front of him, warm and vibrant, funny, sexy and as infuriating as ever, and man, could she ever sell something. Every word she had spoken felt like the God’s honest truth.

In spite of knowing how well she could act, he still couldn’t bring himself to believe that everything she had said was a lie. Clearly, her message mattered too much to her. It showed in the fragility of her expression, the dampness in her gaze — hell, even in the tenderness with which she had washed him.

Yet she still seemed incapable of admitting that she had cheated. Was it because she couldn’t face confronting him with the truth, or because she couldn’t face the mistake she had made?

Whatever the reason, his thinking had shifted. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t admit to the truth. It was that she couldn’t look him in face and tell him.

After twenty years, you would think they could both let it go.

Maybe that’s what he needed to do… just let it go.

Rubbing his face, he looked at the food. He said, “You never ate your candy bar.”

“I couldn’t stomach the thought,” she said. “Not when you were down at the gate, fighting. I couldn’t…” Her mouth worked. “I couldn’t leave you to face them alone.”

So, tired and depleted as she was, she had come down to fight with him, and had gotten herself injured because of it. Before they had gotten trapped together here in the tunnels, he would have said she wasn’t capable of that kind of loyalty.

And he would have been dead wrong.

He had been fine with fighting the ferals on his own. After all, it was his responsibility as Nightkind King to clean them out. He hadn’t been fine with watching her stumble back from the gate, soaked in her own blood.

Snatching up a bar of chocolate, he shoved it into her hands. “Eat it now,” he told her. “As soon as you’re steady on your feet, we’re going.”

She tore the wrapper open, snapped off a square and popped it in her mouth. “Speaking of getting steady on your feet,” she said around the piece. “When we were together before, I gave enough blood to know just how little you’ve taken from me now. You’ve barely taken a thimbleful.”

“I’ve taken more than that.”

“What,” she retorted, “two thimbles full?”

He thought he saw where she was going and started to shake his head. “No, Melly.”

“Julian, you have to take more. Look at me.”

Her voice was so firm that, reluctantly, he turned to glare at her.

For some reason, that caused her features to soften, and she gave him a remarkably sweet smile. There was so much simple affection in her expression, he lost his ability to keep up the strength in his glare.

She told him, “I’ve collected quite an array of scratches and bruises. They’re colorful, but we both know I’m not badly hurt. Plus, now I have plenty of calories and hydration, which I didn’t have before. The only thing I’m really lacking is proper rest. Since I’m healthy as a horse, none of that should prevent you from taking more of my blood, whereas you haven’t healed again. You’re dangerously depleted, and we’re not out of the tunnels yet.” She paused to search his gaze. “Come on, just a little, one more time.”

It went against every instinct he had to take more blood from her when she was looking so vulnerable. He hated that she was right.

“All right,” he said. “One more time.”

She ate the last of the candy bar and downed half a bottle of water. Afterward, she turned to him and held out her wrist.

This time, when he took her hand, he didn’t lift it to his mouth. Obeying a dark impulse, he pulled her toward him until he could put his arms around her. Her smiling expression turned serious and a little wary, but she came to rest against him readily enough.

He knew he shouldn’t take from her this way. The base of the neck was an intensely sexual way to take blood, but he also knew he was going to do it anyway. Slowly, closing his eyes, he bowed his head to rest his mouth against the warm, soft skin in the hollow where her slender neck met her shoulder.

His body had a memory of this experience. How many times had they shared intimacy in just such a way? Without his conscious volition, his tight muscles relaxed, and he drew in a deep breath just so that he could inhale her scent. When her arms stole around him gently, the embrace felt like a rare, precious gift. She leaned her cheek against the side of his head.