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“Hold a moment.”

I froze, half turned between the Brutal Prince and my escape. I felt him cross the room, each step a brutal echo over the goldstone floors. He was too large to be real, even in a palace of soaring ceilings and a land of cavernous valleys.

But his eerily dark gaze fell on Gawayn, rather than me.

“In future, if I close the door behind myself and my betrothed, that door shall remain closed.” His words cut through the air with a ruthlessness that left no doubt he deserved his moniker.

Gawayn did not melt. He stared down the Brutal Prince, a swirl of heated wind coalescing around him.

“My only concern is for the Queen’s protection,” he finally said.

“Good.” Arran stood before me now, his dark eyes sharp and unforgiving as they stared down the Captain of my Goldstone Guards. “Trust that I will safeguard her life above all else.”

An order.

For a second, the wind threatened to coalesce into a cyclone. Then it disappeared entirely.

“Of course, Your Highness.” Gawayn bowed. Just a nominal bending of the waist, but enough. When he rose, he looked to me. “Your Majesty.”

I stepped forward, ready to slip back into my mindless oblivion. Perhaps Parys—

But a hand caught my arm.

My entire body pulsed in response. Every grain of my being was suddenly aware, awake.

I could not think. I could barely keep myself upright as the force of that contact and the events of the last hour threatened to drag me under.

Then the Brutal Prince dragged me in, his mouth grazing my cheek.

All a show, a performance for the assembled audience, so that he could whisper against the delicate point of my ear—

“We will speak again soon. You will explain yourself.Princess.”

18

ARRAN

Her scent lingered on the warm breeze even after she disappeared into the darkened passageway. Plum and primrose, mixed with something darker that I couldn’t identify. Probably an herb indigenous to the elemental kingdom.

“If you want her that badly, just go after her.”

“Want her?” I scoffed, the sound scraping across the back of my throat. “Want to strangle her, maybe.”

Gwen sighed heavily, her long wool skirt scraping across the goldstone floor as she drifted to the window, a wide turquoise and white painted arch overlooking the red valley below. Her eyes moved over the undulating curves of orange, burnt umber, deep brown.

“This was always meant to be my home. I wanted this—to be here—more than anything,” she said, eyes faraway.

It wasn’t a question and I couldn’t pretend to have an answer.

This future had been thrust upon me, the crown of Annwyn as well. But somehow that did not seem as bad as having expected those things your entire life only to have them ripped away. I’d seen Guinevere in many stages of life through our hundreds of years of shared history. Regal, wrathful, covered in the blood of her enemies. But never melancholy. Not until Arthur’s death.

“Thank you for killing the white hart,” I said, my attention still half trained on the golden filigree door my betrothed had disappeared through. I hoped the change in conversation would break the tension—or the melancholy, at least.

Gwen rolled her eyes, turning her back on the scenery below. “Your queen was not as thankful.”

“She will be in time.”

Gwen’s dark brows rose slowly. “You think so, do you?”