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I swallowed around the lump currently burning a hole through my throat. “This is never going to work. You and I. We’re doomed. You know that.”

He sighed, and I closed my eyes, basking in the feel of his breath against my neck.

“I know.” He slowly drew back. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t wish for you with every fucking breath for the rest of my life.”

* * *

The servants thought the boy couldn’t hear them whispering. Thought he couldn’t hear the things they said.

“He shouldn’t have survived,” they murmured.

“Perhaps we should count ourselves lucky that most of his power was taken,” a man whispered. A man who had once been the boy’s father’s friend.

The boy slowly turned his head and allowed him to see he had heard. Just so he could watch the fear flicker through the man’s eyes.

“Perhaps we should,” another muttered, and one of the boy’s pointed ears twitched—enough to make it clear he was listening. The group of courtiers strode away.

Within days, he was all alone. His nanny hadn’t forgiven herself for falling asleep that night and had become listless and withdrawn.

And then one day, as he was sitting beneath the table in the kitchen, petting the kitchen cat, he heard two words that made the breath catch in his throat.

“Your Majesty,” one of the cooks said.

The boy sucked in a breath. His father was alive. They’d been wrong after all. He’dtoldthem. And if his father was alive, his mother was alive too. His father would have protected her with his last breath. His chest expanded, and his cheeks tightened as an unfamiliar expression overtook his face.

A smile. This was what a smile felt like. It had been so long, he’d forgotten.

Scrambling out from beneath the table, he let out an exultant laugh. “Papa!”

The room went silent. Conreth stood in front of him. And the servants were bowing. Not to the boy’s father, but to his brother.

The new fae king.

The color drained from Conreth’s face, even as his eyes glistened. “No, Lorian. It’s me. It’s just you and me now.”

* * *

Lorian received his letter from Marth the next morning, and I sent a letter of my own to Tibris, carefully written in our code. In it, I asked him to decode the letter for Demos, and for both of them to do whatever they could to find the location of the hourglass.

The hybrids were loyal to both Demos and Vicer, and many of them were powerful. Hopefully, they could figure out just where the hourglass was, and we could get to it before the fae king did. I refused to let the hybrids be at the mercy of yet another foreign ruler.

Lorian stood with his hair tied back, his sword on the ground a few feet away. We were up early—Lorian eager to make it to the forest along the border. He’d refused to allow me to take watch last night, but he still looked alert and rested.

This morning, he’d told me we were deep in bandit territory and far too visible on the plain. The thought made the skin on the back of my neck prickle.

“Are you ready?” He focused on me as if nothing else existed. That look was predatory, patient, possessive.

I frowned. We’d packed up the camp, and the fire was dampened, the horses saddled. “You want to train now?”

One dark brow rose. “You’d prefer to wait until you’ve been riding all day?”

I was still dealing with chafed thighs and an aching back after each long day of riding. I was sore now, but it would be much worse later. “No,” I sighed, rolling my shoulders. “Let’s get this over with.”

He crooked his finger.

“You want me to attack?”

“Galon’s been training you to be defensive. But there may come a time when you need to take someone by surprise. And that means learning how to hit hard and fast before they get a chance to put you down.”