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But I didn’t hit the ground.

A hand caught me. Two hands—around my shoulders, pulling me back up and into a solid wall of warmth.

Arran.

His arm hooked around my chest, holding me firmly against him in case my legs gave out. I gritted my teeth, stifling back the tears that threatened. I thought I’d cried them all out the night before. But somehow, here they were.

The scent of him filled my nostrils, stronger than the wet damp of the waterfalls and pools. I felt the scrape of his canines against the shell of my ear.

“They do not get to win,” he said, low and sharp. A growl rumbled through him, through me. “Not like this.”

I dragged in breath after breath. I anchored my being to the heat of his body behind me, the scrape of his teeth on the point of my ear. I let his strength be my strength; let it remind me that I held plenty of my own.

Somehow, Arran knew when I was ready. His arm eased away, and I stood solidly.

“The Dowager did this,” I said, my voice clearer than I expected.

Long silence. A long breath. “Tell me.”

Not a command, but an offer. One I could walk away from, if I wanted.

But I didn’t.

“She took everything. I lived in that room for twenty years, and she took every scrap of my childhood and did the Ancestors’ only know what with it. As if it were hers to take—as if I were hers.”

Arran’s beast growled, low and deep.You are mine, it said.

I belong to no one, I whispered back, though with less conviction than I might have a month ago.

Whether Arran the male heard that silent conversation, I did not know. I could not begin to explain that strange, silent channel of communication that had opened between me and the beast. But I saw the understanding in his furrowed brow as he eased around to look at my face.

He’d seen the locks on the gate. And now, this pitiful cell.

“You were a captive,” he breathed.

“As good as,” I agreed.

“Why didn’t your father free you? Or your brother?”

I could see his mind shifting behind those dark eyes, trying to make sense of it. Uther Pendragon had been a powerful terrestrial shifter, taking the form of a larger-than-life horned owl, sharp beak and talons more than capable of shredding flesh and bone.

“My mother was stronger,” I said. Images flashed in my memory. Raging waterfalls. Torrents and spirals of water that could choke and drown. “My father would visit me sometimes. He’d always promise to convince her that I should be freed, or at least brought out more often. But it came to nothing. It was Arthur who opened the gate as soon as my father died.”

For though my mother still lived, one could not rule without the other. The treaty was predicated on a partnership, an alliance—one elemental, one terrestrial—on the throne, ruling together at all times. So with my father’s death, the faerie crown of Annwyn passed to my brother, and the cycle of heirs and offering and joining began anew.

Arran studied my face, the questions still heavy in his eyes. What? Why? Questions I knew he would not voice.

There were those within the goldstone palace, within my orbit, who knew details of my captivity. Who suspected what might have occurred, even if they did not know precisely. I’d wondered more than once how much Arthur had confessed to Parys, his closest friend. Or to Lyrena, his lover and the one he’d entrusted with my protection once I’d been freed. But none of them said anything. Especially not after Arthur’s death. None of them dared to ask.

Perhaps they were scared to know the details.

But not Arran.

The offer in those dark eyes was clear and sure. Whatever I told him, he’d be able to withstand. And though there was concern and the beginnings of rage in his gaze, there was no pity.

So I told him.

“I was an abomination from the moment I was born. There were sometimes second children born to the High King and Queen, but never a twin. A twin was dangerous. My brother was supposed to have killed me in the womb and absorbed my power. The fact that I lived to be born cast suspicion on my brother’s power, his fitness for the throne.”