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The ice in his voice crystallizes my blood. I know that tone—flat, emotionless, final. I’ve used it myself when civilian casualties become acceptable losses.

Execution tone.

I close my eyes, but I can’t block the sounds. The wet slide of the Spear through flesh and bone. The gurgle of destroyed throats. Bodies hitting earth with the meaty thud of dead weight.

Fifteen kills in thirty seconds. Professional. Thorough. Necessary.

When silence falls, the scent of blood and released bowels fills the clearing.

“They saw,” he says simply, wiping dark blood from the Spear’s blade.

“All of them?”

“All of them.” His laugh carries the bitter edge of someone who’s crossed lines they can’t uncross. “Witnesses to the Spear cannot be permitted to report back.”

“Even the Unseelie ones?”

“Especially them. My father does not know I carry the Spear.” He meets my eyes, letting me see the weight of what he’s revealed. “No one knows except you and my sister.”

I file that nugget of information away for later. Both nuggets.

The responsibility settles on my shoulders like molten lead. I’m one of the only living witnesses to power that could reshape kingdoms, topple courts, rewrite the political map of both realms.

The only one who could destroy him with a single word to the right person.

“Why show me?”

The Spear begins dissolving back into his chest, sinking beneath skin like it was never there. But the process costs him—fresh blood blooms where manifestation tears flesh from within, his face contorting as the weapon settles back into whatever space it occupies inside his ribcage.

“Because some secrets are too heavy to carry alone.” His voice roughens with pain and something deeper. “I have been carrying this one for nearly twenty years—the real reason I am at this Academy. The price I pay to keep someone I love safe from my father’s reach.”

I catch him as his knees buckle, his weight solid and warm against my chest. “Shit! Kieran?”

More blood than I’d realized soaks through his shirt. Each manifestation tears him apart from the inside, wounds layering on wounds until his body becomes a map of sacrifice.

“I am fine,” he mutters, but his skin has gone gray and his hands shake with more than exhaustion.

“You’re bleeding out. Infirmary?—”

“No.” His hand closes around my wrist with surprising strength. “Cannot let them see the extent of injuries. Questions I cannot answer.”

“What kind of questions?”

“The kind that reveal why the Unseelie prince has wounds matching Treasure manifestation patterns.”

Understanding dawns like sunrise over a battlefield. “You’ve been planning something.”

“Smart girl.” He tries to straighten, fails as his legs refuse to support him. “Always too smart for your own good.”

“Then how do I help?”

“My quarters,” he says, voice dropping to something raw. “I can shadow walk us there, but it will cost me everything I have left.” His ice-blue eyes search mine. “I’ll have to trust you completely. Can you handle that responsibility?”

The question carries weight beyond medical necessity. He’s asking if I’ll protect him when he can’t protect himself.

“Yes.”

Shadows surge around us with desperate intensity—his power burning through reserves like a dying star. The walk feels like drowning in velvet darkness, his grip on my hand the only anchor as his magic gutters and fails. We crash-land in his quarters, his body going limp against mine as the last of his strength bleeds away.