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“Nothing. No one. Pretend you never met me,” she said, backing away toward where I’d first spotted her. I could see no path, but this was not my territory.

“But I have met you.” I relaxed my hand on my axe, trying to bring her to ease, suddenly desperate for a name.

She licked her lips. “Have you never told a lie? Never omitted something?”

“I cannot lie,” I said simply.

She rolled her eyes in time with a gruff growl in her throat. “Ancestor’s be damned, are all terrestrials so infuriating?”

I barked out a dark laugh. “Only an elemental would remark upon it.”

Her face hardened “You know nothing about me or my kind.”

“A bold statement,” I bit back. I knew enough. They called me the Brutal Prince, as if I was the only one with blood dripping from his hands.

“One of your precious truths,” she said, voice nearly disembodied as she melted into the shadows of the scrubby trees.

In the distance, bells began to chime, their sound amplified beyond possibility. Elemental magic carrying the tune on the winds, where it would reach the terrestrial delegation waiting in the mountains. They knew we were close. The time to hide and plot had come to an end. The real game was about to begin.

The elemental female’s eyes disappeared entirely from view, her creamy skin shrouded in wisps of black the last I saw of her.

“We never met,” she said softly.

Then she vanished. Fast enough it must have been magic.

What had it cost her?

Why was it worth the price?

10

VEYKA

If my coronation had been a farce, the Offering was destined to be something closer to disaster. The princess who’d been raised in near secrecy revealing herself to a terrestrial scout—and a surly one at that.

Though from the tales that had been schooled into me from birth, it was a characteristic of the rival fae. My father was the only terrestrial fae I’d met until the delegation arrived six months ago to discuss my brother’s joining.

Neither my father nor his kin had impressed me. Not that I held any love in my heart for the elementals. The one person I’d ever allowed myself to love was dead. I would never again allow myself to make that mistake.

But I had made the mistake of lingering too long beyond the palace walls, drinking in the only freedom I had—that which I took for myself.

Careless.

My outburst would keep Gawayn and my handmaidens away from my chambers for a time, but not indefinitely. I was queen—privacy unheard of and impractical.

The terrestrial delegation was close. My betrothed probably already through the Blasted Pass, if scouts were venturing this near to the goldstone palace.

Notthatclose to the palace, an irritating voice inside my head that sounded decidedly like Parys reminded me.

I broke into a run.

The palace guards would be back by now, making their report to Gawayn. Then he would make his—to me. If I was not in my apartments, I’d be in a whole new realm of trouble. Gawayn had not discovered Arthur and I’s secret passage. If he did, my most reliable route out of the palace would be secured. And another connection to Arthur, severed.

But that was only one of my current problems.

My thighs began to chafe in the heat. I hadn’t thought to change into the billowing pants I usually favored when slipping out of the palace. I’d been much too desperate to escape. But I ignored the pain and the sweat pooling beneath my breasts.

Even if I reached my rooms in time, another problem remained—the terrestrial scout.