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“Have they made their selection for the Offering at last?” Teo scoffed.

“Yes,” Roksana spoke up before Esa could.

Esa might be the council’sdonna, but at eight hundred years old, Roksana was its oldest and most experienced member. She was also the emissary to the terrestrial court.

“Do not keep us waiting,” Teo grumbled. “You are as bad as the terrestrials—”

“Councilor Teo!” Elora was on her feet, ice spreading across the table from her hands at the insult.

“Councilor Elora, please mind your—” Esa tried to intervene.

Just like that, the Royal Council, charged with ruling the Kingdom of the Elemental Fae, descended into chaos.

No sign of Roksana’s own ice magic, though her daughter, Elora, was still allowing hers to spread. Soon the entire council chamber would be coated in frost. Teo’s thunder rumbled beyond the open archways, while Esa’s water magic attempted to douse the flames simmering from Councilor Noros on her right.

I just kept pouring wine.

“Councilor Teo, if you would prefer my role as emissary for yourself, you are welcome to it,” Roksana said, her voice cutting smoothly through the chaos.

Esa stilled, annoyance dripping off of her like the errant water droplets that coated her hands. She wasdonna, but Roksana commanded the room.

Teo’s thunder still rumbled in the distance. But Roksana gave not an inch, her dark skin and darker hair unruffled by wind or water or fire.

“Who is the new terrestrial heir?” Esa interceded. I heard the splash of water—Teo’s empty wine goblet filling.

Teo looked like he’d rather splash it in Roksana’s face, but he took Esa’s silent directive instead and lifted the goblet to his lips.

Roksana turned back to Esa. I took that opportunity to slip back between the goldstone pillars framing the council room.

“Arran Earthborn,” Roksana said, voice clear and cold as those gray eyes.

“The Brutal Prince,” Noros murmured, speaking for the first time.

The words crashed over the room like an icy wave. And me, I should have been hit the hardest. It was why I was hiding between the pillars—because I was still terrible at hiding my emotions, even having lived at court for almost a year. My closeted upbringing had inhibited me from learning an elemental’s most treasured tool—deception.

But the announcement that the cruelest, most dangerous and powerful fae male in millennia was to be my groom? It stirred nothing inside of me.

Esa recovered first. “He is old to be selected as heir.”

Roksana wasn’t fazed. “Indeed. But as we have discussed, the terrestrials were expecting to provide a female heir. Therefore, they have begged us to accept their choice.”

Begged. The terrestrials had done no such thing, and everyone in the room knew it. But clever Roksana managed to make it seem as if we, the elementals, were in control. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

The court had been spiraling since a pack of humans snuck into the goldstone palace and beheaded my brother.

It was the only sure way to kill a fae. The humans had planned well.

And this council had done nothing to punish them for it. They may be content to spar with words, but I—

The anger died within me. As it always did.Had it lasted longer this time?No, I did not care enough about that to wonder. I did not care about anything any longer. Not since that moment six months ago.

“Annwyn needs a strong leader,” Teo mused, drawing his index finger and thumb down his cheeks to meet at the base of his receding chin. “Perhaps the Brutal Prince is precisely what is required after the… upheaval.”

Elora snorted. “A king of peace and hope exchanged for one of cruelty and bloodshed?”

“We still have the Princess of Peace.”

My back hit the warm goldstone wall.