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“What are you doing here?” I snapped.

“Searching for you.”

My heart flipped at his answer, and I ignored the sensation. “Why?”

“To apologize.”

I snorted. “Yaga sent you. Didn’t she?”

He came to stand before me, leaning against a stone pillar. Sunlight turned his silver hair to spun gold. His broad shoulders filled out his tailored jacket, and his biceps strained his sleeves. Despite his lack of magical reserves, there was a delicious air of power about him. He looked nothing like the fallen lord I’d pulled from the gallspawn’s jaws. Carcerem had done this to him, breaking him out of his stuffy shell. He was thriving here, and yet he rejected her and what she could offer.

“Runa, I’m sorry.”

Yaga definitely had sent him. “No, you aren’t.”

The corner of his mouth quirked. “No. I’m not.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I’ve…nobody else to talk to.”

I sensed this was also the case in his mortal realm. That he’d chosen to confide in me might have straightened my shoulders, just a bit.

“Doyoubelieve in the prophecy?” he asked, his shrewd gaze studying my reaction.

“Honestly, I…” My knee-jerk response was to declare that I absolutely believed, especially if Yaga said it was true. When in reality, I had doubts. “I don’t know. Even if I did, what does it matter when you do not?”

“I do not,” he confirmed.

“Then whatdoyou believe?” This time, instead of throwing the question at him as a challenge, I genuinely wanted to hear his answer.

He heaved a heavy sigh. “I believe fate is what we make of it. It is our own choices that determine our future.”

“I don’t…disagree,” I dared to admit, causing his brows to shoot into his hairline.

“However,” I held up my palm before he read too much into my admission, “for a moment, let’s take the prophecy out of the equation. You are still a divine being, descended from a demigod, who is intimately connected to Carcerem. The only one capable of sitting on the throne. How can you look at the suffering Idris has caused the land and its people andchooseto turn your back on them?”

He narrowed his eyes. “You mean, why wouldn’t I desire to rule over a desolate kingdom that cannot sustain itself? A place of filthy criminals and peasants who’d love nothing more than to stab me in the back? Where I’m not top of the food chain, and everything in this place wants to eat me? Why wouldn’t I sacrifice my entire life to save them when they’d sooner spit on me in return?”

I winced, having little to contest his argument except to add, “You could be king?”

“King of a dung heap.” He scoffed.

The insult stirred my temper. “You say that because you’ve only seen the worst of our kingdom.”

“There’s more?” He arched a brow.

“Of course, there’s more,” I bit out. “You’ve experienced Carcerem as the main course of a gallspawn’s meal, then as a captive, then as a prisoner in a twisted game.” Now that I put it all together, it was no wonder he was eager to leave. He’d yet to experience the beauty of our kingdom. The heart and resiliency of its people.

Yaga would have realized the same. She certainly didn’t send him to me to apologize. The conniving old woman was up to something. I simply needed to figure out what part she wanted me to play.

“Why did you really follow me out here?”

He didn’t even have the decency to act contrite for his duplicity. “Yaga says there is a way to restore my power. One that won’t take decades.”

My chest tightened. “Ah, it all makes sense now.” He hadn’t come to confide in me. He wanted something.

“She claims there’s a temple created by Hathor. A place of rejuvenation and rebirth I could visit. Only one being knows of its location. A divine creature the goddess created for the sole purpose of guarding her secrets. Yaga believes you could help me find them.”