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Zehemoth lowered his chin toward the earth to get a good look at me.Sunieth. He moved his snout forward and rubbed his scales into my abdomen.

It was hard to resist a hug from a creature so sweet, so I rubbed my palm over his scales and rested my cheek against the warmth of his hard shell. The sun had made the dark color reflect the heat, so it was comforting on a winter day like this. “I’m okay, Zehemoth.”

But your sadness is deep like the ocean. I can’t see the bottom.After he rubbed me again, he pulled away so eyes matching his scales could look at me.

“You didn’t mention this to your father, right?”

No. Why?

“Let’s just keep this between us.”

Then you’ll tell me the source of your unhappiness?

It was a secret too big to tell. When I hadn’t wanted to be queen, Zehemoth had informed his father, who informed mine. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him. It was just a situation so profound that he would probably fear for my safety enough to tell my father. “I’ve been seeing someone…but I think it might be over.”

Oh…He didn’t follow up with questions, either to respect my privacy or because he didn’t know what to ask.I can burn him for hurting you.

A scoff started before it turned into a chuckle. “That won’t be necessary.”

I could eat all his livestock.

“No, it’s okay.”

I could?—

“No retaliation is required, Zehemoth. But thank you.”

Let me know if you change your mind. I could crush him in my talons.

“I know.” I patted him on the snout.

Did you have a fight?

“Yes…we did.”

My parents fight. It’s not the end.

I smiled. “Your parents are bonded forever and madly in love. He and I…” I didn’t even know how to describe it. “It was supposed to be temporary.”

If you knew it was supposed to be temporary, then why are you sad?

“Because…” I didn’t have an answer. And that moment of silence made me realize how complicated my situation had become. I was sad over a man I should have dismissed after our first night together. A man who would never be real, who would never share the same world with me. “You’re right…I shouldn’t be sad.”

I arrived at the castle to join my parents for dinner.

Hawk was already there, but he was quiet and sour, as if our last conversation continued to act as an anchor to his ship. I assumed he hadn’t confronted my father about his true feelings, that my parents just assumed Hawk was being a sore loser about losing the crown to his sister.

We talked about small things through the first and second course, the mild weather we were having for the heart of winter. We discussed Khazmuda and his family in the valley, who were worried about wildfires because of how dry the air was. The dragons were forbidden from releasing fire until we had rain.

I sat across from my father as I picked at my food, unable to look at him the same way. The fact that he looked identical to the memory Wrath had shown me didn’t help either. Just made it more real.

My eyes glanced at my mother, the woman I assumed was my father’s only love.

But he’d had a life before her. Had a life before Hawk and I were born.

As if he felt my stare like a shadow across his face, he shifted his gaze to me.

I immediately glanced down at my food and stabbed my fork hard into my salad, unnecessarily so. The guilt was like a sickness that consumed the flesh, eating me to the bone. I’d violated his privacy in a way he never would have violated mine—and it felt wrong. But my heart felt consumed by the black void of death, knowing what my father had lost. Only now did I understand why it was so hard for him to let me sail away on my journey. The constant turmoil it must have caused him night and day. When the storm struck the sea and he set out with Khazmuda, he’d probably feared he would never find me—and if he was lucky, he would find my corpse to bury.