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“Fates, not this again,” Rhistel moaned. “I couldn’t control it then.”

“Not that you would have wanted to.” His first whispering had resulted in the single most mortifying moment of my life, and my brother had loved every minute.

“Perhaps not,” Rhistel admitted. “I don’t regret trying to get to know your wife better.” His eyes narrowed. “How did she escape, anyway?”

I swallowed. This part of the discussion was off-limits.

“You know, don’t you?” Rhistel glowered. “I’m going to assume it wasn’t you. I’d have woken up with a black eye.” He lifted his hand and tugged off his glove. “How about I see for myself?”

“You can’t.”

“I’m the heir. One day, no one will be able to stop me from what I wish to do. I believe I’ll start that now.” He tugged at the glove again, and I reacted, hurling my fist at his nose.

Bone cracked. Blood spurted. Rhistel fell with a cry.

“How dare you strike me!” Rhistel rose, blood seeping from his nostrils. “You think it’ll keep me away from your commoner? You’ve only made her all the more enticing, brother. If you don’t keep her locked away, I’ll find her. That is, if the vampire assassins don’t first.”

My vision went red, and I lunged at my brother. But he acted quickly, water materializing from the air and streaming into my face.

When it vanished again, he went for his glove. “I’ll have you offer her up to me even. It will be all your idea.”

Like the great white bear in the Pit, I charged, slamming into my brother, hurling his body over my shoulder and tossing him against the wall. He saved himself, though, conjuring water to soften the blow and then slamming it back at me.

I retaliated with a screaming gale that blew the shutters from the windows lining the empty corridor.

“You can’t do whatever you wish, Rhistel!”

“I can. And I will.” He lifted his arm and water poured from the ceiling, and not a trickle,a delugeof freezing water.

It kept coming and coming and with each second, my breath grew thinner.

Had I been less heated, I would have understood that I wasn’t underwater. That all I had to do was take a dozen steps in either direction, and I’d be fine. But nearly drowning as a youngling wrung all rationality from my brain, and I defaulted to fight mode.

I leapt at Rhistel and perhaps only because he’d expected me to lose my head, he didn’t move in time. I crashed into him, knocking him to the ground, and began pummeling him with my fists.

Blood sprayed. On me. On him. On the floor and walls.

Rhistel roared. “Get him off me!”

Somewhere deep in my mind, I must have known that I was going too far, but I didn’t really hear him, didn’t stop.

“Prince Vale, please! Stop!” a voice called out seconds before hands grabbed me to pull me off my brother. Like an animal desperate to avoid being caged, I fought back, fought to be free. “You’re killing him!”

Killing him.My heart stopped its frantic pounding, and I stilled.

“Thank the stars,” a second voice said. “Get help. A healer. The heir can barely breathe.”

Those words brought me back to reality, and I took in my brother, as if for the first time.

His face better resembled ground sausage rather than the face I’d grown up with—the one that looked so much like my own. Blood covered him from chest to crown and pools of red crept across the white floor.

I drew in a shuddering breath. Bleeding skies, what had I done?

Chapter 36

VALE

Iwaited outside Father’s bedchambers, my hands fisting and unfisting to let off nervous energy. As a youngling, I’d stood in this very place many times, waiting for punishment, though never for an act so serious.