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At that moment she realized—she wasn’t just on him. She was perfectly positioned, tactically aligned, cleavage deployed.

Heat flooded her face. Her stomach swooped. She went utterly still, as if not moving might somehowcorrectthe situation. As if he might forget she was there.

“Take your time,” he murmured, his voice muffled against her chest. He nuzzled the dip of her tunic, nose dragging along the bare skin between her breasts. “I’m perfectly comfortable.”

She wanted to die. Or kill him. Or maybe let him keep going. She wasn’t sure which.

“For the love of everything, quit flirting and get down here already! You two can make heart eyes after I’m not dying!”

Skye’s teeth found the edge of her stays and gave a playful tug. Her whole body lit up. But he finally let her grab the notebook, holding it for a second longer as he gave a slow, deliberate stretch beneath her—making her feel every place their bodies aligned.

Taly retreated to the safety of her bedroll. She turned away, hoping he wouldn’t see just how badly she wanted to disappear. Her heart was still thudding. Her skin still burned.

A tap on her shoulder. She turned, ready to snap at him—

But Skye leaned in and kissed her instead.

Everything else fell away.

The teasing, the embarrassment.

For a moment, it was just him, his warmth, and the gentle way he tugged her closer.

When he pulled back, his eyes met hers. “You’re such a jerk,” she muttered, though the edges of her mouth betrayed her as they curled upward.

“Should I start writing my will?!”

Skye sighed. “Duty calls,” he said, leaning in for one last kiss. “Also,” he murmured onto her mouth. “I noticed lingerie was at the bottom of the list. I’d like to put in a request to bump that to the top.”

A pause.

“You read the whole thing,” she whispered, horror growing.

He only grinned wider. “You wrote‘shave down there’with three question marks,” he said, eyes dark. “You know I’m going to bury my face there either way, right?”

Cheeks flaming, Taly picked up the nearest object—a boot—and hurled it, but Skye had already dropped through the hayloft door to the ground below, his laughter echoing.

Chapter 3

At first glance, the nobility of the Fey Imperium appear to follow a structure familiar to most human monarchies—titles like Duke, Marquess, and Baron are common enough to lull one into a false sense of understanding. But as with most things Fey, the truth is both stranger and older than it seems.

Their King and Queen are not merely rulers by bloodline or conquest. They are the living embodiments of their gods, vessels through which divine will is made manifest. These monarchs, along with their divine Council, sit atop a vast hierarchy spanning twelve Dominions, each ruled by a powerful ducal order, each with its own customs, its own burdens, and its own bitter rivalries.

Even their language of succession reflects a depth we struggle to match. There is a word—long, elegant, and entirely untranslatable—that denotes the chosen inheritor of a Dominion. I will not attempt it. For the sake of this account, I’ll simply use the word prince.

It is not quite accurate, but close enough in spirit. After all, what is a prince if not the one born to inherit everything?

-An excerpt from Tales of the Twelve Houses: A Human Scholar’s Account

What was it like being a prince?

For Skye, there were two answers to that question.

First, there was the carefully curated canned response created by his family’s PR team. A script he’d been forced to memorize the moment he learned how to speak and had now delivered so many times that he sometimes found himselfmumbling about the importance of legacy and the responsibility of wealth and privilege in his sleep.

And then there was what he was really thinking every time some idiot reporter asked him that same inane question.

What was it like being a prince?