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I shook my head. “Do whatever you must.”

She began to work, and immediately, relief flooded me. Minute by minute, the swelling lessened until the healer leaned back. “Your sprain is all good. Whatever swelling remains will be gone by the morning. Do try to stay off of it, though.”

“I will. Thank you.”

“Can you seal deeper wounds too?” the prince asked. He’d been quiet, standing behind the healer the entire time, watching. “She has one on her inner thigh. It—”

“How would you know the state of my fiancée’s thigh, Prince Vale?” A sharp voice cut Prince Vale off, and suddenly Roar was speeding over, knocking over a cart and slamming into a small fae as he went. He appeared dazed, stumbling slightly, possibly because he was still under the influence of healing spells or potions, but also red-faced and furious.

I swallowed thickly. “Roar! Please be still! You’re hurt!”

“Why does he know about your thigh, my love?” Roar growled territorially.

“He helped me get here. I couldn’t walk, and you weren’t around.”

“Because I’d been shot!”

“Of course.” I held up my hand. “I wasn’t saying that you weren’t there for me because you didn’t want to be. I meant—”

“I wasn’t there for you, but he was?” Roar reached us and leaned against my bed to thrust a finger at the prince. “Is that how it is, my love?”

“Seems that way,” Prince Vale answered, unable to hide the smugness in his tone.

“It also seems that out of all the royal guards and the soldiers in the arena, I was the one to save the king from an arrow,” Roar retorted. “Shouldn’t that have been you? The famed Warrior Bear?”

The prince’s jaw worked from side to side, and though it would only cause more trouble, I desperately wanted to speak up for him, to tell Roar he was acting ridiculous.

But I had no need, for at that moment, Prince Vale stormed out of the healing sanctuary.

Chapter 27

Eventually, both the warden and I returned to the Lisika suite. Once we were alone, I tried to talk to him, to make him see sense, but Roar would hear none of it. Instead, he stormed into his room, slamming the door behind him. Sighing, I too retreated to my room to wash up and consider how to better broach the subject of Prince Vale.

I, as much as anyone, knew people in power were not always kind, and the story Roar had told me of the prince was absolutely infuriating. And yet, the prince’s recent actions had softened me toward him a touch. He was more than just a pretty face now, but a fuller person, and a bit of a mystery.

After I washed the lingering smell of healing potions and vinegar from my skin, I checked my cuts. Between the potions and balms the healer had applied topically and my own accelerated healing abilities, most of the smaller cuts were already healed. The larger ones would probably be fine by tomorrow.

Finally clean and cared for, I slipped on a simple crimson shift dress that closed high at the neck with a gold brooch and asked Clemencia for privacy. Once she was in her room, I approached the warden, who had decided to read in the antechamber area as though nothing at all had happened.

Like me, he had cleaned and dressed in finery, though beneath his tunic, he still wore bandages just in case his wound opened and began bleeding again. The Master Healer had assured us that this probably would not happen, that they’d layered many enchantments onto the warden and pumped him with healing potions, but as he was a very important figure in the kingdom, they were playing it safe. Roar was to wear the bandage until right before the ball.

Though I studied him, and he must have felt my gaze, Roar didn’t look up from the book he pretended to read, not even as I stood right in front of him. After a full minute of the warden ignoring me, I sighed. “Roar, this is absurd.”

“Is it?” Roar’s eyes lingered on the page. Not a single muscle moved to accept me. “You seem to be a magnet for the one faerie I despise the most. That’s absurd to you?”

My throat tightened. “No, but I never seek Prince Vale. The first time was a pure coincidence. I turned a corner and ran into him. How can you be mad about that? The second—”

Roar hurled the book across the room, where it slammed into a wall, making me jump. “In this world, there are no coincidences. Among the Sacred Eight, everything is calculated, Neve. Why can’t you see that?”

I could see the calculations, the scheming. I hadn’t been here long, but it became plain to me that the highest-ranking fae played a different sort of game, the game of houses. And they played for only one prize: power.

However, that didn’t fit with my time with Prince Vale. It was common knowledge that he and Roar did not get on, and yet, the prince had helped me. He’d stayed with me in the healers’ sanctuary and did what he could to ensure my cuts didn’t become infected. If the prince had been playing the game of houses, he’d have left his rival’s fiancée to suffer while healers attended to others.

I sat next to Roar. “I understand why you dislike him, and I don’t like him for what he did to you and your soldiers.” I let out a long exhale. “But I am glad he helped me to the sanctuary. Did you know I didn’t even feel the glass in my inner thigh? Imagine if it would have dislodged while I walked? Or if while I walked, I caused it to work its way deeper into me and something more serious happened? The entire kingdom fled the Ring, Roar. What else was I to do?”

At that, his face softened. “Stars, Neve . . . Of course you’re right. You could do nothing.”

For a moment, silence hung between us. I’d done my part—extended a rowan branch. It was his turn to try and mend this splinter between us. And if there was one thing growing up among vampires had taught me, it was that silence could be as powerful as words.