Mailly took a shuddering breath, as though she’d been jolted from some waking dream. “Will it hurt?” The simplicity of the question hit Adare like a slap. She had lived so long with misinformation, double meanings, and outright lies—her own and those of everyone around her—that it was easy to forget that some people just asked their questions, then believed the answers they were given. She felt a sudden knife-sharp desire to live in such a world, to cut away all the dizzying layers of her own schemes, to spend even a few days telling the naked truth, hearing it told.
