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He just said it. His mind was fuzzy and muddled from the effects of the spell, and he didn’t want to lie anymore. In the moment, revealing the truth felt akin to exorcising himself of the witch king’s soul.

Emery’s expression turned stormy. Confused. “Bring him back? Why?”

Ambrose had been telling himself a thousand reasons, but the moment Emery asked, none seemed to suffice.

“Why the hell would you want to bring him back?”

“He’s my—”

“King. Yes, I know. You say that all the time, but it’s starting to sound like a deflection, and I want to understand because it makes no sense.”

The witch king growled, Don’t listen to him .

“We were—He was my—” Ambrose struggled to articulate the complex braid of guilt, loyalty, and love that made up his attachment.

“Is this why you really wanted the grimoire? Have you been lying to me this whole time?”

“No! Yes. I don’t know!”

Emery looked stricken. “He was a tyrant, he was terrible. And all this time you wanted to find the grimoire, it wasn’t to help me defeat Morcant, it was to bring back the witch king? Why?”

“Because I thought I loved him!”

At the same time, Emery screamed, “He killed you!”

In the cavernous ceiling of the tomb, both phrases echoed. A chorus of I loved him, I loved him, I loved him and he killed you, he killed you, he killed you.

Ambrose whispered, “What do you mean?”

He lies.

“He didn’t kill me. A rebel killed me with that axe, we were just—”

“An enchanted axe. An axe specifically charmed to defeat you?” Emery gestured to the one on the wall, its glow a damning indictment.

If it had been a labor for Ambrose’s heart to beat after using his magic, it was an agony now.

He stared at the axe. It had cut through his chest, but his heart only felt truly broken in that moment.

“He didn’t. He wouldn’t.”

Of course. Never. This is a farce. “I thought you knew.” Emery’s voice broke, all his anger draining away. “It’s in every history book.”

“I can’t read them!” Because the witch king never taught him.

“I thought you knew,” Emery said again. His jaw worked, his expression flitting between confused and horrified.

“I thought you knew, and all your complicated feelings about him were because you were still grappling with that betrayal. It was over five centuries ago, but you’ve only been alive six weeks.

I thought you were still—processing. I thought you must have known the moment rebels showed up with an axe purpose-built to destroy you. ”

Ambrose, for the first time since his body had been reshaped to fit him, left it behind. His fingers went lax. The book fell and hit the floor with a cacophonous thud.

Even as he didn’t want to believe it was true, he knew it was. Loyalty had blinded him so thoroughly, he’d never even considered it.

It made no sense. So long as you live, so do I. Why destroy the key to his immortality?

Unless that, too, had been a lie …

Emery’s expression was sour with self-reproach, but it softened as he took in Ambrose’s defeated posture. Slowly, he walked over. Ambrose didn’t realize a tear had left a track down his cheek until Emery swiped it away with a thumb.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Why are you sorry?” Ambrose asked.

“I should have known it’s—complicated. Accepting the truth.”

Ambrose gave him a questioning look.

“It took me a long time to realize the Morcant who encouraged and mentored me was the same man abusing me.”

Ambrose had never applied that word to himself before, but as Emery’s hand settled solidly on the back of his neck—not in a gesture of possessive control, but to tip their heads together in empathetic commiseration—he finally admitted it.

The witch king had hurt him in countless ways before enchanting the axe that ended his life.

That betrayal had been the last, but far from the first.

It did not take more than a pair of doe eyes to convince you of this heresy against me. What good is your loyalty, now you turn your back on the only man who could ever love you?

“We should get out of here,” Emery said.

Ambrose nodded, eager to be away from the dead silence, where the witch king’s voice sounded so loud.

Emery picked up the grimoire from the floor, slapping dust from its cover and tucking it under his arm. Ambrose let him take it. He didn’t want to touch it.

They headed for the door which led out through the mausoleum.

Green light flashed. Their eyes had no time to adjust from the dark. Everything was blindingly bright as lightning rocketed up Ambrose’s body. Beside him, Emery screamed and recoiled from the doorway.

Ambrose squinted with his arm over his eyes until his vision adjusted. The light had come from the floor, where a sigil had been drawn around the entire tomb, trapping them within.

“I must express my gratitude. You’ve both inspired me greatly with that little spell.”

Morcant appeared in the doorway. With a smug gesture, he indicated the sigil glowing underfoot. His fingers were dark and wet as if dipped in blood—from drawing the sigil, or for some other spell? With one thumb, he drew a line across his neck, staring at the arcane collar. “And for that one.”

Emery said, “How can he see us?”

“Did you think, after you ambushed me in the bog, I wouldn’t find some means to see through invisibility spells?” Morcant tutted. “I wondered if Ambrose noticed during our little chat, but perhaps I gave him too much credit.”

Ambrose’s mouth went dry. During their chat in the courtyard, Morcant’s eye had an unusual sheen, a slightly paler blue than the other. Ambrose had wondered if it could see through his lies.

In a manner of speaking, it could.