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And then Kellyn looks over his shoulder. I see his eyes bulge before he pulls me into some darkened nook between a bookcase and the space under another set of stairs.

My heartbeat pounds in my ears, and sweat drips from every pore. Still, Kellyn covers my body with his, shoving us into the corner of the space, blocking anything running by from seeing me. There’s nothing heated in the gesture. This is survival. Icover my mouth with my hands to dampen my labored breathing. I’m nearly overwhelmed with the dried blood taste on my skin.

Frenzied footsteps sound everywhere in the palace, but I immediately register the loudest sets, which come to a halt when they reach a loud crescendo that can only mean they’re right next to our hiding place.

“You’re telling me you bargained your freedom for killing dozens of my soldiers?”

My body tenses at Ravis’s voice.

“You should have waited for me before attacking. I would have spared the loss of so many of your men.” I’m even more shocked to realize it’s Kymora responding.

“You caused the losses!”

“And had I been on the right side of the wall, the loss would have been entirely on Skiro’s side.”

“I didn’t have the time to wait around for you. You were gone for weeks! I thought you were dead.”

Kymora scoffs. “I’m not killed so easily.”

“Just captured and dragged about Ghadra by a bunch of adolescents.”

“I heard the same adolescents got the better of you. Wiped out you and your entire regiment of soldiers with a single sword.”

“It’s that damned smithy. When I get my hands on her—”

“You will do nothing. We need her.”

“Like hells we do. We have the superior numbers. I’m done trying to get anything out of that lady smithy.”

“She only needs to be handled carefully and given the right motivation. She won’t get the best of us again.”

“Because she’ll be dead.”

“Ravis, use sense. Even once you have the throne, you need the resources to hold on to it.”

“That’s what you’re for. I reinstate you as general over my armies. I rule as king. That was the arrangement. Not my fault you butchered the plan by detouring and wasting time with that magical smithy. If you’d only joined your men up with mine sooner, the world would already be ours.”

“Instead, you took Elany and my men for your own,” Kymora says, her voice dropping dangerously.

“They needed money to feed their families. I offered them jobs,” he says in defense of himself. “What’s done is done, but I’ll not let you bungle this up again. The smithy dies. Her friends die. And my brother will spend the rest of his days in prison.”

“And what of your other brother?”

“My father’s bastard?”

Petrik.

“My son,” Kymora says, her tone making it perfectly clear what she thinks about the word Ravis used.

“You can kill him or throw him in with Skiro. They can rot together. I don’t really care. I just want what should have been mine from the start.”

I can feel Kellyn’s heartbeat where our chests are pressed together. It stutters out a too-fast rhythm.

Kymora laughs, the sound unkind.

“Yours?” she repeats with contempt. “Ravis, half the reason your father split the realm was because you couldn’t handle the full responsibility on your own.”

“That’s not true and you know it.”