TAELYN

I leave this morning.

Silent tears fall down my cheeks. I turn in a slow circle, observing how bare my room already looks, though I’ve only packed a few cases and some personal items.

I have to travel light.

I’ll take a couple of horses with me, including my gray mare, Arsher, but it’s a long journey, and I don’t want to put them under undue strain because they’re carrying packs laden with stupid trinkets.

None of it means anything. It’s just stuff.

Now that I’ve agreed to marry King Robertus, nothing seems to matter anymore.

I’m not sure I even feel the sadness at leaving the castle or the city.

I take my misery and stuff it deep inside me. It’s better if I feel nothing.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” Skylar asks as she helps me dress. “Isn’t King Robertus a lot older than you?”

I nod. “And King Themaris Loftborn was a lot older than my mother, but she still married him, and, for the most part, they lived a happy life together. Sometimes, as a ruler, it’s important to do what’s right for the kingdom instead of what you want as an individual.”

“But what about?—”

She cuts herself off, but I know what she’d been about to say. What about Prince Ruarok?

My heart aches, but I try not to feel it. He’s not important. What we shared together was just a few moments of sex. It was nothing important. He is nothing important to me.

I feel as though I’ve been transported back ten years, to when we left my homeland of Torremora to come to Askos, only now I’m the person marrying a king she doesn’t even know, and I don’t have my mother by my side.

I have to believe King Robertus won’t know I’m no longer a virgin.

That I allowed my stepbrother to take that from me.

It’s said that good horsewomen are often thought to not be virgins, so that is the excuse I’m sticking to.

There’s a possibility he’ll just throw me out, though, and refuse to allow any people from Askos into his kingdom, no matter how bad the rot gets here.

I haven’t even spoken to Ruarok since, though he’s tried to on many occasions.

Every time I think of him—which is every minute, it feels like—my heart breaks anew.

He’d been so angry at the idea of me marrying King Robertus, but what else am I supposed to do?

It’s not as though he’s asked me to marry him, and, even if he did, it wouldn’t save the people of Askos.

I have no choice but to go through with this and pray I don’t end up homeless and alone .

Skylar picks up my final case. “I’ll take this down to the courtyard and wait for you there.”

She can tell I need a minute to myself.

She’s about to leave, but I stop her again. “Skylar, thank you for coming with me. Both you and Balthorne. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” I’m aware they’re giving up their homes for me.

“As long as Balthorne is coming, too, we’ll both be okay.” She gives a small smile. “He feels the same way.”

“Of course Balthorne is—” What she means hits me. “Oh, wow, that’s fantastic. I’m so happy for you both.”

“Thank you, Princess.” She gives a small curtsey and carries my bag out of the door.

I turn away, letting out a deep sigh and taking my final look at this place. I will miss it so much. Maybe it wasn’t my home to start with, but it’s become that way. I’d never wanted to leave.

“Taelyn?”

Ruarok’s deep voice comes from the direction of the door, and I spin to face him. He’s so beautiful, my heart aches for him.

“What are you doing here?”

“I can’t let you leave.”

I try not to let my voice wobble and fail. “You don’t have any choice in the matter.”

He takes a step closer. “If I’d done things differently, would you still be leaving?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“What if I promise to change?”

I close my eyes and shake my head. “Your promises mean nothing. How am I supposed to trust you now?”

“You have to.” He seems desperate. “I love you. ”

His words catch my breath.

“Do you? I thought the only thing you loved was the idea of sitting on the king’s throne.”

His gaze flicks away. “Maybe, at first.” He brings it back to mine, locking our eyes. “That was before I got to know you. Before I learned how brave and strong and stubborn you are. Before I fell in love with you.”

A painful tightness constricts my throat. “How am I supposed to believe that? You planned to ruin my reputation. To make people hate me, all by being with you.”

“I’m sorry. I’d say it a million times if it would make you believe me. You know how I feel about you. The way I look at you. How we are together. I can’t fake that.”

“How you feel doesn’t matter. How I feel doesn’t matter.

I’m not doing this for you or me. I’m doing it for the kingdom, for the people who live here, so they’ll have somewhere safe to go.

One day, maybe soon, maybe years in the future, the rot will completely consume Askos, and then those people will need to find refuge, just like my mother and I found refuge here all those years ago.

How can I deny them that? To take something from them that I was lucky enough to have? ”

“Taelyn…” It’s as though he’s run out of words.

I can’t look at him anymore. My heart is threatening to break. “It’s too late. I have to go.”

I move to get past him, but he drops to his knees in front of me.

He takes my hand, presses his forehead against the backs of my fingers, and closes his eyes.

“Giving you up goes against everything I want. I’d rather be locked away again than living my life knowing you belong to another man.

But if you believe it’s the right thing to do, then I’ll support you.

I’ll give you up, Taelyn, even though I love you with every fiber of my being, and I’ll never be happy again. I won’t fight anymore.”

A single tear slides down his pale cheek. He lifts his gaze back to me, his dark eyes glistening with pain.

I fall to the floor, facing him, my heart breaking.

A rumble comes from somewhere outside. We both straighten and turn our heads toward the sound.

A split second later, it gets louder, rolling toward us in a wave.

The floor beneath us vibrates and then becomes a shudder.

Books and candles fall from shelves. Mortar rains from the ceiling. The candelabra swings wildly.

Oh, God, no. It’s happening again . The rot is going to take us.

I prepare for the castle to collapse around our ears.

Ruarok pulls me into his arms, shielding me with his body.

We huddle together, clinging to one another.

Is this the end? All that heartache and pain for nothing.

I grieve for us, and for the future that had never been our destiny.

It's like living that terrible night I lost my mother all over again. The noise is deafening; dust falls around us. The ground shifts and shakes.

And, just as I believe we’re all about to die, everything goes silent again.

We stay as we are for a moment, still clinging to one another, waiting for it to start again. When nothing else happens, Ruarok releases me, and slowly we unfurl, like ferns emerging from a winter slumber.

Cautiously, I look around. There doesn’t appear to be any structural damage to the room, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t damage elsewhere.

I remember seeing the missing tower that day, how it had felt like someone punched my heart straight out the other side of my chest. I brace myself for what might have happened this time, for the loss we’re bound to have suffered.

“Are you all right?” Ruarok asks as he helps me to my feet.

I cough from the dust and nod. “I think so.”

I’m still trembling, but my heartrate is starting to slow. I feel weak and shaky, and I don’t want to look, but I know I have to. He keeps hold of my hand and we walk to the window together, to look out at the rest of the castle and the sprawling city below.

Ruarok draws to a halt, and I stop beside him.

“Taelyn, look.”

My jaw drops. “I-I?—”

For once in my life, I’m lost for words. Where the giant hole had once been where the King’s Tower had stood, there is now ground. It’s not perfect, by any means—it’s dirt and rubble—but it’s solid.

“How is that possible?” he says.

“I have no idea.”

I release his hand and turn to run.

“Where are you going?” he calls after me.

“To take a closer look.”

Until I see for myself what I think might have happened, I’m not going to believe it. Ruarok, with his much longer legs, quickly catches up to me, and we hurry through the castle, down to the ground, and outside to where the King’s Tower once stood.

We come to a halt in the same spot where I’d stood only days before, peering down into the darkness, my toes on the edge of that deadly fall. Only now it isn’t a hole I’m on the edge of, but what appears to be solid ground.

I lift my foot, but Ruarok’s hand on my arm stops me.

“No, let me go first.”

He takes a tentative step out on the ground, the same place that had been a gaping void into nothingness only an hour earlier. My heart feels as though it’s in my throat, and I reach for him, planning to grab him should the ground start to sink.

“It’s solid,” he says and takes a couple of experimental jumps to prove his point.

I gasp and place my hand to my chest. “By the gods, Ruarok, don’t do that.”

“It’s fine, Taelyn. It’s no different than where you’re currently standing.”

I walk forward to join him and understand what he means.

“But this is impossible,” I say, turning a slow circle. “Where did it all come from? It’s as though the ground has just closed itself in.”

“I think that’s exactly what’s happened.”

I shake my head in wonder. “It’s magic.”

In a perfect world, perhaps the magic could have raised the tower again, could have put my mother and the king safely back in their bed. But this is not a perfect world, and we still have to deal with their loss. I don’t dare hope for what this might mean.

Ruarok captures my hand then uses his other hand to point out across the city.

“Look.”

In the quadrant where the rot had hit the worst, and had felled so many buildings, the hole it had left has also sealed over.

“I don’t understand what’s happened,” Ruarok says. “It’s as though the rot has healed itself.”

“I think that’s exactly what has happened.

” I remember the Mage’s words. “A love sacrifice. That’s what the Mage said would stop the rot.

Something good against evil. Light against dark.

” I turn to face him and take his other hand.

“That’s what you did, Ruarok, when you said you’d give me up.

You sacrificed your love for me for the greater good, and it worked.

For the first time in your life, you made a decision that went against what you wanted. You were selfless.”

This whole time, I’d believed I was the one who needed to make the sacrifice, but the Mage never actually said that.

I’d simply made the assumption that it was supposed to be me.

Instead, Ruarok made the sacrifice, unwittingly, without expectation of anything in return, only because he felt it was the right thing to do.

But he shakes his head. “No, I would never sacrifice my love for you. Even though I’d agreed to let you go, it didn’t mean I wouldn’t still love you. I’ll always love you, Taelyn, no matter where we are or what we’re doing. That will never die.”

“But don’t you see?” I urge him. “If the rot is gone, I don’t need to marry King Robertus to allow the movement of our people. They can stay here, and so can I.”

He stares at me as though he doesn’t believe what I’m saying. “You’re not marrying him?”

I laugh, but it comes out as a happy sob. “No, of course I’m not. ”

He scoops me up and kisses me hard. “Then you’re marrying me instead.”

“We’re stepbrother and sister,” I say, though I’m grinning.

“So? Who makes the laws in this land? We do. We’ll have the biggest wedding Highdrift has ever seen.”