“I didn’t come here to be interrogated,” I snapped. “What of all your attentions toward Calantha?”

His shoulders pulled back. “I suppose we’re both putting on the performances of our lives.”

His accusatory tone made my anger spark into a fire. “Performance? Is that what you call it? You lied to me. Your life’s complicated. That’s what you told me. Complicated?”

“What are you dredging up? Last night or Terravin?”

“You act as if it happened ten years ago! You have such an interesting way with words. Your life isn’t complicated. You’re the blazing crown prince of Dalbreck! You call that a complication? But you went on and on about growing melons and tending horses and how your parents were dead. You shamelessly told me you were a farmer!”

“You claimed you were a tavern maid!”

“I was! I served tables and washed dishes! Have you ever grown a melon in your life? Yet you piled on lie after lie, and it never occurred to you to tell me the truth.”

“What choice did I have? I heard you call me a princely papa’s boy behind my back! One you could never respect!”

My mouth fell open. “You spied on me?” I whirled around, shaking my head in disbelief, crossing the room, then whipping back to face him. “You spied? Your duplicities never end, do they?”

He took an intimidating step closer. “Maybe if a certain tavern maid had bothered to tell me the truth first, I wouldn’t have felt that I had to hide who I was!”

I matched him step for angry step. “Maybe if a self-important prince had bothered to come see me before the wedding as I had asked, we wouldn’t be here now at all!”

“Is that so? Well, maybe if someone had asked with an ounce of diplomacy instead of commanding like a spoiled royal bitch, I would have come!”

I shook with rage. “Maybe someone was too scared out of her wits to properly choose her words for His Royal Pompous Ass!”