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The granite rubs hard against my fingernails, a strange tickle coming with it. My laughter comes out so hard it sounds tinny. “Let me guess. I think I know who your brother is.”

Silvius lifts my hand that lies between us and blows on the scratched tips.

His brother is the king.

Gently, he pinches my chin to stop my strange grinning.

My chest jumps on more laughter. “So that makes you...”

Nicostratus Aetherion.

My Prince Nicostratus. The one I met as a child, in the royal woods, down south in Hinsard.

The one who saved me.

He casts his gaze to the road carved into green hills, where he’d saved us from a fate at the border. “I got waylaid yesterday... it was dawn by the time I reached him. I told him about you”—Prince Nicostratus snaps his head towards me—“without divulging your identity.”

I nod and nod.

He smiles, but the brackets around his mouth are thin, tired. “I wouldn’t want to cause you any more trouble.”

Trouble.

Branded redcloaks, dead. A dying Silvius. The blood River left behind...

Clouds roll overhead, casting us in shadow. Again, I snicker.

“I told him you were...” His voice is soft, and I wonder if he’s ever suspected I’m also the boy he saved in the woods. “I don’t often ask for favours; he sensed my urgency. He didn’t ask questions, just promised he’d keep the one I cared for safe. So he defied our uncle and commanded the decree. I don’t want to know what that cost him.”

He’sPrince Nicostratus.

His brother—the person he’s gushed about in his letters, who he loves wholeheartedly, who he would do anything for—is the king.

The cause of so much pain in my world.I chuckle and chuckle until my eyes are stinging from squinting.

“Prince Nicostratus...”

“I like the way you say my name.”

“Nicostratus.” I’m familiar with the taste of his name on my tongue and say it again in my head. Nicostratus, Nicostratus, Nicostratus.

A smile. “You gave me a chance to live.” He pauses. “I hid my name—”

“For my safety?”

“Yes.”

“Did River—”

“He knew. I asked him, I asked all my men to...”

“Pretend.”

He picks up my hand. I let him squeeze my fingers, but I can’t squeeze back. I can only watch with strange fascination, not feeling any of the pressure but seeing how my fingertips turn white.

“Are you angry?” he asks.

Another abrupt laugh. “Actually we’ve met before.”