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Killed and maimed so many innocents.

But I wasn’t a young male. I was the most powerful fae in millennia, and I had a power I ought to know how to control after three hundred years.

I’d failed to protect my mate, who’d been ripped away from me. But I’d also failed to protect my kingdom, killing my subjects just because they had the ill-luck to be standing too nearby.

I knew the shame was shining in my eyes.

But it wasn’t in Veyka’s.

The blue was shifting as a storm cloud, a window into the swirling emotions inside of her. But there was no pity or scorn.

There was knowing.

Her fingers closed around mine, burrowing beneath my hand where it lay on her shoulder until our fingers were tangled together. She pulled me closer, until our faces were inches apart.

Veyka pressed her forehead against mine.

We stayed there, balanced on a knife’s edge, without speaking. A minute, an hour, an entire night may have passed around us as we shared breath, holding on tightly to each other.

Finally, she spoke.

“It is time to go,” she breathed.

“Good, you’re freezing,” I returned, though neither of us moved.

Her other hand skated over my arm, warmth radiating from beneath my tunic even as the cold winds whipped around us. “It’s time to leave Annwyn.”

I started to ease back so I could look at her face. “Veyka, you can’t run now…”

But her hand circled my neck, pulling me back down. “Not forever,” she said softly. “But the legends say that Avalon lies in the human realm.”

We were too close for me to read her expression, but my eyes snapped fully open. “Avalon?”

“Yes. If the priestess who made this blasted prophecy is there, then I will find her. And I will demand answers.”

26

VEYKA

It took too long.

I was a danger to everyone around me, and yet they moved through the goldstone palace as if everything was normal—as if I couldn’t rip them limb from limb with my new, uncontrollable power.

Even if Cyara had healed, had insisted again and again that she wasfine.

I hadn’t felt that burning ember flaring, nor that telltale tingling in my extremities.

I didn’t let myself get angry.

I tried to summon the emptiness that had been my constant companion in the months after Arthur’s death. But even that was a challenge. I’d been content to dwell in my own darkness because I didn’t have friends; because I wouldn’t allow myself to care.

Now, I had an entire Round Table of Knights.

An entire kingdom of subjects who depended on me.

Ancestors-damned fucking hell, I cared.

It hurt to care. It hurt so much.