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“Yes.”

“We tracked her here,” Lachlan told him. “Watched her taken into a tent.”

Tomas’s relief was palpable, his rigid posture melting around Jessamine with an audible sigh. “What’s been done?”

“Captain Johesha’s gone in to get her,” Mattias explained.

“What do we know?” Mallor asked.

Lachlan looked at his father, studying the face of the man he’d spent so much time at odds with, relieved to see him. “You’re here.”

“Of course I’m here,” Mallor replied as if there weren’t any other alternative. “My son is here. His betrothed has been—abducted, it would seem. This is an attack on Jast.”

Lachlan swallowed, looked down, and nodded, his throat suddenly struggling to operate. He wasn’t exactly sure why his father being here moved him in such a way. Lachlan knew his father loved him—despite their epic arguments and failures to communicate with one another—his father’s love hadn’t ever been in question.

“Why do you doubt me?” Mallor asked quietly.

Lachlan was taken aback at the question. Had he doubted his father? “I don’t doubt you, Father. I felt you doubted me.”

Mallor reached out and grabbed the side of Lachlan’s face, his fingers curled around the back of Lachlan’s head. “I have always believed in you, Lachlan. Even when you didn’t believe in yourself.”

He hung his head. “I didn’t give you a reason to. Before.”

“Do you think any of us have given our fathers reason to think we’ll rise to the occasion.” Mallor grinned, pulling Lachlan into his embrace. “I shouldn’t have promised you to Truisante that way.”

“I should have spoken to you–”

Mallor pulled away to look Lachlan in the eye. “What is done is done. On my honor,” his father started and stopped, filled with the emotion and weight of those words. He swallowed. “On my honor, I will strive to be a better father.”

“On my honor, I will strive to be a better prince.”

When Mallor drew back, he took a moment to search Lachlan’s face, offered him a wan smile, then repeated his question, the mantle of king on his shoulders once more. “What do we know?”

Lachlan took a deep breath, centering himself. “Organized group. Forty to fifty strong. Armed.” He paused. “I suspect this is the group Keyanna’s spies uncovered.”

“The assassins?” Mallor asked.

Lachlan nodded and looked at Jude and Brendsen. “Anything else?”

They shook their heads.

“If they find out Miss Fareview is your betrothed…” Mallor’s brow creased deeper than it already was. “What’s been done?”

Lachlan filled his father in.

“They let Johesha in?”

Major Urik, the leader of the King’s guard, moved through the ranks to Mallor’s side.

“What is it, Urik?”

“Movement, Your Majesty.”

Turning to look, Lachlan saw a mass of bodies moving through the encampment. The cluster of men broke apart as Captain Johesha, held the man who’d taken Tarley into the tent at knifepoint in front of him, walked through the throng of men allowing him to pass.

“Where’s Tarley?” Tomas asked.

“There,” someone said. “Behind the captain.”