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It took forever, that painful walk back in silence. There was nothing to say. I didn’t dare ask for reassurance, and Arran wouldn’t offer any platitudes. There was at least that much respect between us.

The wall of ivy appeared and I felt my knees tremble beneath me in relief. A few more minutes, and she’d be safe within the palace. I’d give her my own bed, call for the best healers. Anything, everything, to save her—

“What the hell?”

I froze, my hand already on the door. I started to spin, knife in hand, ready to meet whatever new threat—

But there was nothing. Just me and Arran, Cyara unconscious in his arms.

And my hand was on the door.

He hadn’t opened the wards.

He knew that I hadn’t either.

No. No, no, no, no. This could not be happening. Not now, not with—

Arran stared at me blankly, his confusion written all over his achingly handsome face. “How?”

I swallowed hard, but let the words come. “The wards do not recognize me. They never have.” I was able to move in and out of the goldstone palace without dismantling the wards, because they didn’t even detect my presence.

It was a twisted joke, that the very reason I’d been locked away was the key to my ability to sneak in and out undetected.

“But surely, after your brother—”

“The wards are keyed to power.” I took one last sharp breath before finally breaking loose that piece of my soul. “And I have none.”

I’d been so careful. Whenever I came in or out of the palace with Arran, I let him break apart the wards, or I was far enough ahead he assumed I’d opened and closed them myself.

I watched the understanding ripple through him. His body stiffened, fists contracting into tight balls and feet shifting into a defensive stance. Readying for battle, even with Cyara’s battered body in his arms. Understandable, given the extent of my treachery, though unnecessary. But his face… something inside me died as the openness that had grown between us shuttered, the trust gone in an instant.

“You… you are human,” Arran said carefully, a sharp, guarded mask covering his face, betraying nothing.

“No. The wards detect humans, even before what happened to Arthur,” I clarified, hating every word.

He did a magnificent job of masking his emotions, but I detected the slight widening of his eyes as he said, “You are a fae without power.”

Slowly I exhaled that breath I had been holding.

“The one and only.”

He was shaking his head. Slowly, then faster, then stopping entirely as he remembered the burden in his arms. “How… how can that be?”

I swallowed hard, revealing the final piece of the puzzle. “Why do you think my mother kept me locked in the water gardens?”

“You didn’t tell me.” The final nail in my coffin. “You lied to me.”

My throat was closing. My heart, pieced back together tentatively, was burning away to ash. My weapons, still in place from sparring in the ring a lifetime ago, were so heavy I almost couldn’t stand.

But then Cyara shifted slightly, a terrible moan falling from her lips.

“We have to get her to the healers,” I said in a voice that belonged to someone else, because I was certain I no longer had the ability to speak.

I turned for the door, wrenching it open and not letting myself look back. “Don’t forget to seal the wards behind you.”

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ARRAN