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“I don’t report to you. I am not a common soldier under your command,” I shot back.

The bickering was a distraction against the fear building in my chest. Maybe Arran knew that.

“So much for trust.”

“No one ever told me the Brutal Prince was so damn whiney.”

“Let’s find your missing handmaiden and then I’ll show you what it’s like to—”

“Enough!” I ignored the tingle of lust in my spine. Ever-present, when Arran was around. “Her father used to be a palace librarian. She was only meant to talk to him, then return here. I would never have sent her into danger.”

“I’m glad you deemsomeoneworthy of your consideration. Even if you don’t extend me the same courtesy.”

I snarled over my shoulder before throwing myself flat on the ground to wriggle free of the tower.

Arran’s beast growled right back.

I felt Arran blast the wards apart. I didn’t need to remind him to seal them behind him. He was always careful, always in control. My opposite, in so many ways.

I ran through the trees, circling the base of the goldstone palace. Cyara would have gone out the servants’ entrance. With her wings, she didn’t need to worry about taking the wide route around the Gremog’s territory. She’d be on a direct path from Baylaur.

I shouldn’t have sent her.

“This is what it means to be a queen.”

Whether his beast heard it on that unspoken frequency between us, or I’d said it aloud without thinking, it didn’t change my answer.

“I never wanted to be queen.”

Those words echoed in my head again and again. I was ready to scream them to the sky, to the world, to the Ancestors above and below.

But another scream wrenched from my gut instead.

She was nothing more than a heap of white and red.

The coppery tang of blood filled my head, making my senses swim. It was everywhere. In a pool around her, staining the simple white gown she wore, and on her wings.

“Ancestors,” Arran breathed behind me.

Her beautiful wings…

Where they had been, there was nothing but a mass of bones and bloodied feathers sticking out at all angles. Whatever had attacked her—or whoever—had targeted them specifically. My stomach roiled, threatening to spill its contents.

But her shoulder quivered, and I forgot myself entirely.

I fell to my knees, gently skimming my hands over her body to check for more wounds. Gashes, scrapes, but nothing fatal. She was breathing, though unconscious. But her wings…

“They might not be able to heal them,” Arran said.

I looked up at him through the tears in my eyes. It was a mistake. The expression on his face was hard. Experienced. He’d seen bloodshed like this before. Of course, he had. He was a commander. He’d let legions of terrestrial shifters into battle. He’d surely seen wings in worse shape than this. The realization of just how much brutality he’d witnessed over the past three hundred years turned my stomach anew.

“We have to get her back to the palace,” I yelped.

I began shifting my position to carry her myself, but Arran nudged me aside.

Better, some still functioning corner of my brain said. Faster, for him to carry her and me to lead the way. We couldn’t go up the spiral staircase, couldn’t shove her beneath that narrow entrance. But we could take the door hidden in the ivy.

I led the way back, having to restrain myself from running. Arran couldn’t run with Cyara in his arms, he’d risk jostling her and injuring her further.