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“The very people who benefit most from the prince’s desperate gratitude! Usually the same clever individuals who arranged the crisis in the first place!” His grin widens impossibly, needle teeth gleaming like promises of pain. “Create the problem, provide the solution, own the asset forever!”

Understanding detonates through my nervous system. The Spear erupts against my ribs, ancient metal screaming recognition of a trap three centuries in the making. Frost explodes across the archive floor in jagged spirals—territorial markings carved by betrayal too deep for words.

My father isn’t trying to prevent my renunciation.

He’s counting on it.

The archive door exhales open without sound. Air thickens like honey, charged with the scent of winter storms and absolute authority. Shadows pool at his feet like spilled wine eager to serve. Every surface in the room dims by degrees—not darkness falling, but light retreating in submission.

My father steps through the threshold, and reality bends around his presence. No dramatic entrance needed when you own the air itself.

He surveys the unsigned renunciation with satisfaction that makes bile climb my throat, corrosive with the taste of my own stupidity.

“My son.” His voice carries the same gentle warmth I remember from childhood lessons about power and its properapplication—the tone he used while teaching me to survive by becoming exactly what he needed. “I see you’ve been busy.”

His gaze caresses the parchment like a lover’s touch, and something that might be pride flickers across features carved from ice and shadow.

“Father.” I don’t rise. Don’t show proper deference. Neither of us maps exits—we both know exactly where the real dangers lie, and they’re standing in this room wearing familiar faces.

“Such a dramatic gesture,” he continues, moving deeper into the archive. Frost retreats from his footsteps like beaten animals seeking shelter. “Public renunciation of your inheritance. Very passionate. Very... predictable.”

The word brands through skin, muscle, bone—molten metal rewriting my understanding with truth too sharp to survive.

“You wanted me to write it,” I say, each syllable carved from certainty that tastes like blood.

“Wanted? Oh, my dear boy, I was counting on it.” His smile widens to reveal teeth that gleam like fresh bone, predatory satisfaction radiating from every pore. “Desperate love makes people so beautifully choreographed. You’ve spent the past six hours performing exactly as I knew you would the moment you realized what tonight’s trial would cost.”

Frost erupts across every surface, geometric patterns spelling out my emotional devastation in ancient script I never learned to read. The temperature plummets until my breath mists with each word, but the cold burning through my veins has nothing to do with magic.

“The renunciation isn’t rebellion,” I breathe, understanding settling into my stomach like swallowed glass. “It’s playing directly into your hands.”

“Precisely.” He settles into a chair like he’s holding court in his own throne room, shadows writhing around him in patterns that mirror my growing horror. “When she chooses the UnseelieCourt to save her life, when the debt magic binds her to our service, you’ll be her only ally. Her only source of comfort in a very cold and unfamiliar world.”

“Because I’ll be just as trapped as she is.”

“Because you’ll be grateful.” His ice-blue eyes—so much like mine—hold satisfaction that sends arctic fire clawing up my throat. “Two lost souls finding solace in each other, both completely dependent on my continued goodwill for survival.”

The Spear brands through shirt, skin, sternum—ancient weapon recognizing the moment when protection becomes possession, when love becomes chains. Heat radiates outward until sweat breaks across my forehead despite air cold enough to shatter.

“She’ll hate me for it,” I whisper, the admission tearing from my throat like confession, like prayer, like the first honest thing I’ve spoken in years. “Getting her through magical compulsion rather than choice.”

“Initially, perhaps.” He waves one hand dismissively, frost following the gesture in elegant spirals. “But desperation has a way of softening even the most stubborn hearts. And you, my son, will be very dedicated to earning her forgiveness.”

“You’re destroying everything we could have been.”

“I’m ensuring you’ll have something to be.” His voice carries the flat certainty of someone who’s spent centuries perfecting psychological destruction disguised as strategy. “Love built on mutual choice is fragile, unpredictable. Love built on mutual need? That endures.”

“That’s not love,” Finnian snarls from his position among ruined books, Crown pulsing with golden fury that makes the air itself vibrate with rage. “That’s elaborate psychological torture.”

“It’s practical,” my father corrects with scholarly precision that makes me want to strangle him with my bare hands. “The Wild Court heir needs powerful allies to survive what’s coming.My son needs purpose beyond the crown he never wanted. I’m simply... facilitating a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

“By removing our ability to choose it freely.”

“Choice is a luxury for people who have time to make mistakes.” He stands. “The political landscape is changing, children. Powers are shifting. In such times, survival requires decisive action rather than romantic idealism.”

Through whatever fragile connection I’ve forged with Ash, I sense another pulse of her emotional state. Still that unsettling calm. Still that sense of someone who’s prepared rather than terrified.

And for the first time, a terrible thought claws through the devastation.