Page 16

ALIX

I wake up abruptly and sit straight up in bed.

For a long moment, I have no idea where I am or what’s going on. I immediately assume I’ve had a nightmare, except, this time, I’m not shaking. There’s no anxiety coursing through me—and actually, I can’t remember my dreams at all.

I shake my head, confused and look around to ground myself.

I remember now—Daemon walking me back to my room and then leaving. Me getting ready for bed early and falling asleep on top of my newly started crochet project. That can’t have been that long ago. Now, I’m alone in the moody purple bedroom at the Winter Palace, except… I have to blink a few times to make sure I’m seeing correctly.

There’s bright light streaming through the stained-glass windows, lighting up the scene and creating magical patterns against the floor. I gasp. It’s the first time I’ve seen the windows in the light, but that means it’s actually daytime. More concerning, I can hear raised voices and the distant clanging of a bell.

What the fuck?

I swing my legs over the side of the bed and rub my eyes. The distant voices seem louder now that I’m paying attention. There’s shouts of laughter, screams and chatter. It sounds like some kind of party is going on outside…but it’s daytime. How is that possible?

I stand up from bed and cross the room to the double doors leading out onto the balcony. I’ve barely used this balcony since arriving here—it’s not much fun to sit outside when it’s pitch dark and cold enough to snow. Now though, I throw the doors open and step outside.

I’m standing on a small curved stone balcony, barely five feet wide. Roses climb up the railings and stone walls of the castle, and sun streams down from a nearly cloudless sky. I immediately let out an involuntary sigh as the sun hits my face and beats down on the top of my head.

Oh, Vitamin D, how I’ve missed you.

I wish I could stop and just soak it in for a moment, but I can’t. The fact that anyone is awake when the sun is out is definitely cause for concern. Possibly panic. In the distance I can hear the loud clanging of a church bell, ringing continuously. I put my hands on the railing and lean over the balcony to see what’s going on below.

There are dozens of people out on the lawn, screaming, laughing. They don’t look cursed.

Someone is rolling in the snow, while another man chases a redheaded woman like they’re playing tag. I spot another group out of the corner of my eye. Three men are standing together, their voices raised in some kind of argument. As I watch, one of the men punches another across the face. Oh shit.

The man who was hit reels back, then spins on his attacker…Wait, is that a knife? A split second later, the redheaded woman’s laughs turn to screams as the man chasing her tackles her to the ground.

I stumble back a few steps toward the doors to my room.

Okay, what the fuck is happening?

Obviously, there’s violence going on in broad daylight on the lawn, but no one looks like they turned into an animal or monster or anything like that.

Before I can dwell on it too long, a banging sounds against my door.

“Alix!” I jump at the sound of Daemon’s deep voice screaming my name. “Alix! Let me in!”

Um, what the fuck? When did he get back from dealing with the wolves? And more importantly, why is he screaming my real name where anyone could hear him?

I scurry to the door and flick the lock, throwing it open without thinking. “What’s happening?” I blurt out. “It’s daytime!”

The words dry up in my mouth as I look at Daemon standing on the threshold.

Immediately, I know I’ve fucked up.

A sense of uncanny dread drops into my stomach when my gaze meets his. It feels like the first time I saw Odessa and her too symmetrical face filled me with a primordial knowing that she was dangerous. I’ve never gotten that feeling from looking at Daemon…until now.

“Shit!” I curse, trying to close the door again, just as the warning Daemon gave me on the first night comes flooding back. Don’t unlock the door for anyone, not even me.

How could I be stupid enough to forget that?

I try to shove the door closed, but he puts a hand out and easily holds it open. I give up, and instead scramble backward.

The Fae can kill you without blinking an eye.

The curse causes us to act like animals, even if we keep our own faces.

Daemon lets the door fall closed behind him and looks at me for a long second. There’s definitely something off about his eyes. They’re tracking me.

“Uh, hey,” I mutter. “I think something is going on. Maybe we should go grab Odessa, or any of the guys…”

He ignores me, just stepping further into the room, never taking his eyes off me.

Because apparently my brain is broken, I don’t immediately collapse in terror. Instead, my stupid, traitorous mind jumps to how inhumanly handsome he is, even when he’s looking at me with that strange predatory glint in his gaze. He looks hungry—but not like I’ve seen him look at me before. This isn’t lust; he’s looking at me like I’m food.

I stumble back a few more steps, glancing down to avoid his eyes. “I don’t know what’s going on,” I stammer at the floor. “But whenever you go back to normal, you’re going to be really pissed that you killed me. You need me, remember?”

He stops moving, his footsteps coming to an abrupt halt. “You think I’m planning on killing you?”

His voice sounds normal, which seems like a good sign, but still, something is very weird here.

“I’m honestly not sure what you’re thinking right now.”

Daemon moves so fast that I barely blink before he’s closed the rest of the distance between us and he’s standing right in front of me. “I’d never hurt you.”

“Okay, good. Then let’s talk about this tonight when you’re feeling back to normal.”

He doesn’t react or move a single inch. Instead, he lifts his hand and pushes my hair back from my face, then trails his fingers down the length of my cheek. A jolt of electricity shoots through me, sending little sparks all over my body.

“Look at me,” he demands.

Oh God. There is something seriously wrong with me because my brain is at war with itself. One part of me is terrified and another steadily growing part is excited as the tension in the air practically crackles with heat.

His gentle fingers turn demanding, and he grips my chin in one hand, forcing my face up to his. His eyes dart all over my face. “You’re so fucking beautiful, Alix.”

I suck in a sharp breath, and my pulse begins to thrum even faster beneath his fingers. “What?”

“You’re so damn perfect, it makes me fucking angry.”

“Angry?”

He doesn’t answer immediately, leaving the question hanging in the air as his fingers tighten on my face and he walks me backward toward the edge of the bed. I think he’s going to push me onto the mattress, but instead, he snakes one arm around my waist and pulls me flush against him.

Every time we touch it’s like I forgot how fucking good it felt the last time. How the hard ridges of his muscles feel beneath my fingers, and how my pulse thrums between my legs, ready and begging for more.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he growls. “You’re in my head every fucking second reminding me exactly why I shouldn’t be looking at you. It’s infuriating. You’re infuriating.”

Jesus Christ.

He’s got to be drunk. Or could it be drugs? Maybe the entire court is high and that explains why everything is so weird.

“Daemon…” I begin as the hand on my chin trails down my throat.

His fingers stop tracing my skin and settle loosely around my neck. He’s barely touching me but I’m all too aware that if he wanted, he could close his fingers and choke the breath from me. That should scare me, but as I feel him grow hard against me, I can barely suppress the moan that wants to escape my lips.

He dips his head so his mouth is pressed against my tangled hair, and his hot breath tickles my ear. “Did you know that Fae senses are much stronger than humans? I can always smell how much you want me to fuck you. I can taste it, and it’s driving me fucking insane.”

I suck in a gasp. He can smell me getting wet for him? Um okay, that’s so fucking embarrassing. Please let me just drop dead now.

My internal panic attack immediately goes silent when his hands dart down and cups me between the legs through the fabric of my nightgown. He scrapes his fingers over the thick fabric, and a jolt of pleasure shoots through me. I whimper.

His lips crash down on mine, swallowing the sound.

I melt against him. He kisses me hungrily, his lips hot and demanding, as if he’s lost all inhibition or control. I part my lips, matching his intensity, and heat floods me, pooling in my core.

He pulls his hand out from between my legs and replaces it with his thigh pressing firmly between my legs. I gasp into his mouth and shift my hips, grinding against him. My clit pulses with need, and all I want is for him to touch me. Take me. Break the painful tension that has been building between us ever since he promised me a round two back in Ironhill.

His fingers dig into my hips, pressing me down hard against his thigh. My pussy throbs, and I roll my hips, desperate. Needy. Unrestrained.

He pulls his head back, breaking our kiss, and instead presses his face against my throat. He inhales sharply and nuzzles his face back and forth against my skin. “Alix…”

The door bangs open, and I jump in surprise just as Daemon drops me on the bed. I blink in confusion at Kastian in the doorway. Behind him, I can see the outlines of Fox and Jett in the hallway, and that’s when I suddenly remember that mere moments ago, I was terrified of whatever was going wrong in the castle.

Kastian glances at me for a fraction of a second before focusing on Daemon. He runs a hand over the back of his neck and sighs, looking resigned. “I guess it could be fucking worse.”

I wince. I wish he hadn’t said that.

DAEMON

When I wake up, I know exactly where I am.

The curse doesn’t steal memory, but sometimes, like now, I fucking wish it did.

I groan and sit up on the thin mattress in the soldier’s barracks and swing my legs over the side of the bed. My skull throbs, and I rub the spot on the back of my head where I think Kastian must have hit me.

“Kas!” I bark into the empty dormitory style room.

As I expected, Kastian pokes his head into the room, clearly having been waiting directly outside the door. He doesn’t smile, just watches me warily. “You’re up.”

“Yeah,” I growl, shaking my head. “Unfortunately. What the fuck happened?”

He steps into the room and leans against the doorframe, crossing his arms. “I hit you.”

“I figured…” I shake my head. “That’s not what I meant. What happened before then? What went wrong?”

He shakes his head too, but more in bewilderment. “Someone started ringing all the church bells, and it woke the entire court.”

“What?” I growl, jumping to my feet. “Who the fuck would be so stupid?”

“Dunno,” he says. “There were at least a dozen casualties, and they’ve only just started to look for people.”

Gods. “Anyone we know?”

He shakes his head again. “No, but it easily could have been.”

“Fuck, I need to go talk to Alix. Explain, or something…” I trail off. What the hell am I supposed to say to her? “I could have fucking killed her.”

Kas shrugs. “I don’t think so.”

I laugh hollowly. “What do you mean? She’s human, of course I could have hurt her.”

“I don’t know, mate. You didn’t seem that interested in killing her. And before you try to tell me that’s worse, she seemed pretty willing to me.”

I glare at him, but it’s half-hearted. Kas did all he could in that situation, and he’s right—I remember all too clearly the sounds she made and how fucking wet and ready she was, and just thinking about that makes heat burn in my chest.

But that doesn’t change the fact that I could have hurt her.

And it doesn’t change the fact that it’s incredibly clear to me what really happened here.

Someone did this on purpose—there’s no doubt about it. Everyone in Ellender knows that waking the Vernal Court during the day is deadly. What’s more suspicious is that I almost wasn’t here when it happened. If I’d been delayed in the forest dealing with the wolves, or worse, injured, then what? Alix would have been alone. Not that she was all that much safer with me here…

It doesn’t feel like only hours ago that I brought Alix back to her room with her bags of yarn and left to deal with the wolves, but it was. I brought Jett and Fox with me, leaving Kas here in case anything happened to Alix.

Except, when we arrived in the forest, there weren’t any wolves.

Another soldier might have wasted time looking for them, but not me. I returned to the palace just before dawn and found nothing amiss, and chalked it up to coincidence and paranoia.

But now, I’m not so sure.

“I’m going to find Foulo,” I state, more to myself than to Kastian.

“Foulo?”

“He sent me out of the castle. This must have something to do with him. The slimy, evil, pri?—”

“I doubt it,” Kas interrupts. Foulo is cursed just like you. “He couldn’t have had the presence of mind to ring the bells; it must have been someone from outside.”

I blink at him. He’s right . Fuck.

I turn on my heel and storm toward the door.

Kastian sighs with exasperation. “Wait, where are you going now?”

“I’m going to find Thorne and make him do something about this.”

“He isn’t here, remember? He went somewhere with a handful of guards.”

“Then I’m going to fucking fly to wherever he is and drag him back by his hair. He’s the damn king, he should be here.”

It’s a testament to how angry I am and how well Kas knows me that he doesn’t bother to ask how I’m going to fly to wherever Thorne is when my life isn’t in immediate danger. My adrenaline is so goddamn high right now it’s a struggle to keep the wings hidden. Flying across the continent would be no trouble at all.

I reach the door and stride halfway down the hall before Kastian runs after me. “Daemon! Wait, before you go rampaging all over the damn castle, you should check on Alix.”

“Why?”

“I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but if your instinct wasn’t to kill Alix but claim her?—”

“You’re right,” I bark. “I don’t want to hear that because it’s bullshit. It doesn’t mean anything. I was out of my fucking mind.”

Kastian’s eyes narrow. “Maybe, but from what I’ve seen over the years, the curse doesn’t make you do anything you wouldn’t do otherwise. It doesn’t turn you into a different person; it intensifies who you already are.”

“Tell that to all the people I’ve killed.”

“Yeah…but that’s my point. If your instinct was to kill Alix, you would have. You’ve killed guards and assholes trying to start shit. People we all secretly wanted to kill anyway. You’ve never tried to hurt me or Fox or Jett.”

“I haven’t tried to hurt you yet ,” I grumble darkly. “Once would be all it would take.”

And that’s exactly why a tiny part of me is grateful that this will all end in a matter of weeks. Once the curse takes over fully, I’m sure the other three kingdoms of Ellender will band together to wipe Vernallis off the map.

Then at least, I won’t have to worry about hurting anyone I care about ever again.

I march through the castle in the direction of Thorne’s tower. All around me is chaos.

Furniture and windows are smashed, the floor is bloody, and several people are weeping in the halls. Gods, this brings back dark memories.

In the early days after the curse was cast, it was always like this—every day was a new opportunity for destruction, every daylight hour, anyone could be the next to be attacked, or become the attacker themselves.

I march angrily up the grand staircase, stepping over what looks like the charred remains of burned books and perhaps someone’s jacket.

“Ashwater!”

I turn on my heel toward the sound of my name. Thorne strides toward me, paying no mind to the destruction around him.

I don’t bother to greet him. “I was just coming to find you. When did you get back?”

He grimaces. “An hour ago. What the fuck happened?”

“Shouldn’t you be answering that question,” I hiss. “You’re the king, after all. You need to find out who started this. It would have had to be someone from another kingdom to be able to ring the bells when it was already light out. Or maybe someone with enough magic to make them ring themselves…”

His lip curls. “Interesting theory.”

“Why don’t you seem angry?” I demand. “This is your fucking kingdom. An attack on Vernallis is an attack on you, and?—”

He cuts me off. “Is Isabelle alive?”

“Alive?” I blurt out, blinking in confusion. I shake my head to clear it. “Yes, she’s fine.”

“Are you sure? You were outside her room when this started, weren’t you?”

“I—Yes. I was asleep in the hallway when the bells must have woken me up along with the rest of the court.”

“No one broke into her room?” Thorne asks. “She didn’t leave to see what was happening?”

I shake my head. “She’s fine.”

He sighs. “Good. I feel terrible that she’s had yet another near-death experience so soon after returning to Vernallis.”

“Yeah, you sound really broken up about it.”

He narrows his eyes at me. “Just make sure you stay with her at all times. If Isabelle gets hurt before the rose moon, I’ll know exactly who to blame.”

I open my mouth to tell him about the supposed wolves and how I nearly wasn’t here for the attack but stop. I don’t know what’s going on here, but being honest with Thorne has never worked out well for me in the past.

“I’m not going to let anything happen to her,” I growl instead.

Thorne looks down his nose at me, the corner of his mouth pulling up in a sneer. “Then you’d better go find her before something else goes wrong. Humans are so fragile, it only takes the blink of an eye to snuff them out.”

Despite knowing she’s fine, I’m still relieved when I find Alix safe in her room. Fox is sitting outside, and he just looks up at me when I approach.

“Is she in there?”

He nods and gets to his feet, walking down the hall without a word. I’ve never been so fucking grateful that he doesn’t talk.

I suck in a breath and knock.

“Yeah?” Alix calls.

I take that as her version of “come in” and open the door.

Alix is lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling. She’s wearing a high-necked purple dress today with her hair pulled up and off her face.

I mean to say “hello” but what comes out instead is, “What are you doing?”

“The same thing I do every night,” she grumbles, not looking at me. “There’s nothing to do here.”

“Where’s your yarn?” I demand, completely distracted from why I came in here in the first place.

In answer, Alix raises a hand in the air and points toward the corner of the room.

Her gigantic gray cat is sticking halfway out of the shopping bag and I can see strands of tangled yarn sticking to his fur. I shake my head and turn back to Alix. “Listen…”

She sits up and looks directly at me, her pale blue eyes so steady I feel the urge to step out of the way of her piercing gaze. “So the curse makes you act like animals, huh? You couldn’t have been a little more clear about how that works?”

I close my eyes for a moment. I start to say “I’m sorry” but realize mid-word that I’m not sorry. Not exactly.

I’m fucking furious that she could have been hurt and that Thorne doesn’t seem to care about the court anymore now that it’s so close to the rose moon.

I’m relieved that I didn’t physically harm Alix, and that nothing worse happened.

I’m consumed with the memory of how it felt to touch her again and pissed as hell that we were interrupted before I could taste her.

But I’m not sorry; not when she so clearly wanted it too.

But I can’t say any of that.

I clear my throat. “I wasn’t myself last night. It won’t happen again.”

Alix scoots to the end of the bed and swings her legs over the side, her bare toes skimming the floor. She folds her hands in her lap and looks at me through her lashes. “What won’t happen again? Me finally seeing you all cursed, or you kissing me?”

I clear my dry throat again. “Both. If anyone aside from my friends found out, I’m not sure Thorne would bother with Dyaspora. He’d just order me executed.”

And unfortunately, the threat of hurting my friends or Alix would probably mean I wouldn’t fight, I’d just let him do it.

She narrows her eyes at me. It’s infuriating to have no idea what she’s thinking, and I hold my breath…waiting.

“I’m fine pretending it never happened as long as you’re willing to explain exactly what happened last night. No leaving out important details or letting me draw the wrong conclusions on my own. I’m sick of not knowing what’s going on.”

I suck in air through my teeth. Among all the other things I’ve gone out of my way to keep from her, I haven’t wanted to explain the curse. I don’t want her to be afraid of the court…or more especially of me. But now I don’t have a choice.

I run a frustrated hand through my hair, trying to think of the right words to explain. “I wasn’t lying before. The curse causes us to revert to our most basic instincts, like animals.”

She looks sideways at me, her eyebrow raising. “Explain.”

“It strips us of anything that makes us Fae. Magic, reasoning, logic. We don’t turn into another form, but in a way that’s worse because you might think you’re looking at someone you know but it’s not them at all.”

I shudder, remembering the early days of the curse before we’d all collectively agreed to sleep during daylight hours. And almost worse, the hour a day in Dyaspora when I lost all sense of myself. I wasn’t the only one from Vernallis in the prison, and that hour of sunlight each day was always nerve wracking—for me in the hours leading up to it, and for my friends while they had to ensure I didn’t kill anyone by mistake. They weren’t always successful, and there were many nights we were forced to bury the dead.

“So it removes inhibitions,” Alix says, like she’s thinking out loud rather than asking a question. “Like being drunk.”

“No,” I say sharply. “Nothing like that. Drunk people are still people, but the curse strips away anything but animal instinct. It’s impossible to form a coherent thought. Everything just becomes need-driven. Food, sleep, sex, territory—those are the only things that matter.”

“You seemed pretty coherent last night for someone with supposedly the same reasoning capabilities as Sushi.”

I turn to look at her cat again, who is now batting a ball of yarn across the rug and darting after it, his sharp claws outstretched. He looks harmless, but in reality, all he’s doing is showing his instinct for hunting. If the cat were six and a half feet tall and 250 pounds, he wouldn’t look so cute. I need Alix to understand that.

“At least twelve people died last night. And that’s just the actual deaths, there were countless other attacks. The castle is nearly destroyed.”

She reels back. “Seriously? From what I saw, everyone looked like they were having fun?”

I close my eyes. “Sometimes they are. It’s hard to explain instinct. One moment it’s like you’re high, and the next a brawl will break out with no warning. Not everyone is inherently good and some people’s base desires are perverse, deranged and violent. When the curse was first cast, we lost a third of the citizens of Vernallis in the first six months, and another third in the hundred years since.”

“Jesus.”

“Those of us who are left try to sleep through most of it. Sleep is also a base instinct, so while it doesn’t lift the curse, it makes it more manageable.”

She bites her lip. “Wait, then when do you sleep?”

My brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

She looks confused. “I mean…since you’re always with me when you’re not, you know, cursed…when do you sleep?”

“Worried about me, Peaches?” I blurt out before I can stop myself.

“Oh, never mind,” she huffs, a flush rising to her cheeks.

“I sleep when you do,” I say finally, jerking my head toward the door. “Out there.”

For a long second, she just stares at me. “Are you serious? You’re sleeping outside my room.”

I give her a pointed look. What the hell did she think Thorne meant by watch her every moment of the damn day? “You didn’t notice?”

“No!” she screeches. “That’s so fucking creepy.”

I laugh, but not necessarily because it’s funny. If she thinks that’s disturbing, she’d hate to be inside my head.

I know I told her last night how I can’t stop thinking about her. I hope she assumes that was just a product of the curse, but it’s more true than even I’d like to admit.

In a very short span of time, my entire existence has shifted to revolve around Alix. I wake up when she does, walk her to and from meals, and stand against the wall always watching her. Even when she doesn’t come out of her room all day, I sit there, watching the door. She’s the only damn thing I can think about anymore to the point that I can’t keep track of why I’m doing this. Am I here because Thorne ordered me to be or because I promised to keep her safe?

I cross my arms and lean back against the wall. “If you don’t like it, tell Thorne. Maybe he’ll let me leave.”

She looks up at me, her eyes narrowing. “Why do you bother?”

I blink at her. “Are we speaking the same fucking language right now? I just said Thorne won’t let me leave.”

“Yeah, but you ignore all the other orders the king gives you.”

“No, I don’t.”

It’s her turn to laugh. “Yes, you do, I’ve seen you.”

“Thorne is just?—”

“And that!” she interrupts. “You call the king by his first name, even to his face. I haven’t heard anyone else do that. Why doesn’t he correct you?”

I pause. Shit.

I guess she was bound to figure this out eventually. I don’t even know why I’ve bothered to keep it from her. The rest of the damn court knows, and now that Alix knows about the curse, I suppose she can know about me too. “I call Thorne by his first name and treat him differently than everyone else because I’ve known him my entire life. He’s my older brother.”

ALIX

I walk over to the bed and sink onto the edge, if only to give myself a moment to think. “Um, what? But you never said?—”

“Half-brother,” Daemon amends. “And no, I’ve never mentioned it because it’s not something I like to think about. I’m not exactly proud of where I came from.”

“You’re just full of secret family members. First, a siren for a cousin, and now a royal half-brother. Any illegitimate children you’d like to mention?”

Please say no.

“No, no children and not that many other family members either. Other than Thorne, I’m an only child. My father—both the real one and the one who raised me—are dead. My mother is still alive and living nearby, but I haven’t seen her in about a century.” He chuckles. “If we’re getting technical, I suppose I’d call Kas, Jett and Fox my brothers too, but that’s everyone. When you grow up like I did, you have to make your own family.”

My family was kind of a mess too and I always wanted to find the kind of group of friends you see on TV who do everything together and always have each other’s backs. It just never really happened for me.

“So you’re a prince, then?” I ask, eager to keep him talking.

He lets out a harsh bark of laughter. “No, I’m not a fucking prince.”

I feel myself leaning forward with interest, but it’s like a bucket of cold water over my head when he stops talking. “Getting information from you is like pulling teeth,” I complain. “What do you want?”

“What do I want ?” He looks genuinely confused and it makes me smile. It’s nice not to be the one in the dark for once.

“I mean, Fae like bargains, right? There must be something I trade you for the information.”

I hadn’t exactly meant that to sound like a proposition, but our eyes lock and I know we’re both remembering last night. Even if it was just the curse making him act like that, it still felt real. And I have no excuse. I just…wanted to.

“Fuck,” Daemon curses and runs a hand through his hair. “Don’t say shit like that, Peaches.”

“Why? There must be something I have that you want.”

He closes his eyes, looking like he’s fighting with himself not to look at me. He backs up a few steps. “Alright, fine, you want a story? I’ll give you one.”

I sit up straighter on the bed, unable to hide my excitement as I settle in to listen.

“My parents—the ones who raised me, that is—were members of the court. The Baron and Baroness of Ashwater. It was a badly kept secret that King Florian took mistresses among the women of the court, but he usually stayed away from married women—until my mother.”

“She was the king’s mistress?” I ask, hardly able to believe that he’s actually explaining this.

“Yes, at least for long enough to get pregnant. I think her husband—my adopted father—must have known I wasn’t really his son because he always hated me and wasn’t subtle about it.” He barks a harsh, humorless laugh that I’m positive is hiding some real trauma. “Poor bastard must have been livid that he never had any other children so he died knowing I’d inherit his title and lands.”

“When did he die?” I ask breathlessly.

Daemon rolls his eyes as if searching for the answer in the back of his head. “A little over a hundred years ago? I was young and in school with all the other noble children, including my half-brother, Prince Thorne.”

My mouth falls open, and I forcibly shut it again, swallowing thickly before I can string two thoughts together into a question. “So, when did you find out?”

Daemon leans against the wall beside the door, then slowly sinks down until he’s sitting on the floor. He looks resigned, like he knows that now that he’s started, I won’t leave him alone until he finishes explaining.

“Pretty much from the moment I first saw the king,” he admits. “I never looked like the Eleventh Baron Ashwater, but I didn’t think much of it—until the first time I met King Florian. Turns out, I do look like my father.”

I swallow. Shit, that’s intense.

“So, I assume other people noticed? That you look like him, I mean.”

“Yes.”

It’s hard not to notice that Daemon and King Thorne look nothing alike, even now knowing that they should. They’re the same height and built similarly, with strong lean muscles, but their features are worlds apart. The king must resemble his mother. I wince. That couldn’t have made the situation any easier.

“That doesn’t explain why you’re familiar with King Thorne, though,” I point out. “Did he know you were his brother?”

“Yes, eventually,” Daemon replies. “As I said, we were schooled together, but I wouldn’t say we were friends—the opposite actually. I hated him, and believe me, it was mutual. And then he had to go and do the worst fucking thing imaginable.”

“What?”

“He saved my life.”

I cock my head to the side. I can’t say I know the king well—or at all, really—but from what little I’ve seen, he doesn’t seem like the self-sacrificing type. “How did he do that?”

Daemon shifts around again, seeming to stall for time as he readjusts his seat. “Schooling in Ellender is nothing like it is in your world. We focused a lot on honing magic, and being young, it didn’t occur to me how dangerous it might be to draw attention to myself.”

“Dangerous how?”

“I was…unusually talented. As is Thorne—or at least, he was prior to the curse—but what with looking so much like the king and rivaling the crown prince in magic, I began to attract rumors. By the time I was seventeen, those rumors had reached the queen, and she ordered that I be killed.”

“Killed? Just like that?”

“Yes. There’s no room for questions when it comes to the royal line. The queen knew she had to make sure her son’s path to power was clear of challengers.”

“But he saved you?”

“Yes, Thorne suggested that instead of being killed, I was merely banished.”

“So that’s how you ended up in prison?”

“No, not yet. That came later. Initially I was banished to the human world.”

“You’re shitting me,” I say, in complete disbelief.

He laughs for real this time, and against my will, my heartbeat quickens.

“How do you think I learned to travel back and forth through the gates?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. But how did that work—living in the human realm?”

“It probably wouldn’t have worked except that I got lucky. This was just over a hundred years ago by your timeline, and I arrived in Britain just after the First World War. With so many people displaced, it wasn’t hard to claim I was a foreign orphan looking for work. A little magic, and no one questioned me.” He exhales heavily. “After a few years, though, I couldn’t take it anymore. Magic is far easier to use here than in the human realm. Or at least it was prior to the curse. What little I can do now is nothing compared to the power I once had, and I grew restless without it.”

I think about how I would feel if I lost access to music. Like my arm had been cut off. Even after just a few days without my violin, I feel like I’m going through withdrawal. I imagine it’s the same for him with magic.

“So you came back?”

“I did. The banishment was intended to be permanent, but I’d gotten wind that the king and queen had both died, and that Thorne would be ascending the throne.”

“They died?” I ask, taken aback. “How?”

“That is the question, isn’t it?” he says bitterly. “It was blamed on an accident, but no one was ever really clear what happened. At the time, I didn’t care. I was excited that Thorne would be taking the throne. We hadn’t gotten along as children, but he’d saved me and I assumed he’d allow me to return.”

“And he sent you to prison?”

He lets out a humorless laugh. “If you want to tell the story, by all means, go ahead?—”

“Sorry.”

“I returned and went straight to see Thorne. As I’d expected, he welcomed me back. I was appointed captain of his guards almost immediately, and everything was fine for a while.”

“That was nice of him.”

Daemon scoffs. “Nice isn’t what I would call it. His decision was strategic. Thorne is self-absorbed and unobservant, but he’s not actually stupid. He realized that keeping me close and in debt to him would be far less dangerous than letting me walk around freely.”

A chill runs down my spine. It’s impossible not to notice that perhaps the same thing is happening now. From what I’ve gathered, King Thorne broke Daemon out of prison, let him bring his friends, and gave him his old job back…but if this has happened before, then where is that all leading?

“Then what?”

“Then Thorne decided it was time to take a wife.”

I blink, caught off guard. That’s not where I thought this was going. My mind races. Is this whole thing a fight over a woman? Who? It couldn’t be Claudette…

Daemon continues, unaware of my internal monologue. “He met with dozens of noble women from all over the continent, and even some from the neighboring continents. He even met with one of Kastian’s—” He stops short.

“One of Kastian’s what?” I urge.

“A woman from Kastian’s city,” he corrects.

I frown. That’s not what he was going to say, but I don’t interrupt. Not when he’s talking more than he ever has before. “So, did he pick someone?”

“Yes. Even though he met with princesses from all over Ellender, he chose a commoner with no important connections whatsoever.”

“Why?” I ask, wrinkling my nose.

“At the time, everyone assumed it was love. Now, I think it was because she was a sorceress and came from a long line of powerful magic. I think he believed his children would have strong magic. They got engaged and the wedding was planned for the upcoming rose moon.”

“I’m assuming it didn’t work out?”

“No,” he says bitterly. “Before the wedding, Thorne had already lost interest. He abandoned his fiancée for another woman and she disappeared. In revenge, she cast the curse on the kingdom.”

My head spins. “I’m the first person to defend reacting however you want to betrayal, but it seems a little unfair to curse the entire kingdom along with him.”

“I doubt she was thinking rationally. The betrayal was fresh and extremely unexpected.” He pauses. “This might be difficult for you to understand, but infidelity among the Fae is incredibly rare.”

“But your father?—”

“Was the only male I’d ever heard of who betrayed his partner. Until Thorne became the second. It simply doesn’t happen.”

I scoff. “How is that possible?”

He sounds uncomfortable. “We’re not human, no matter how much we might appear to be. Our biology is different.”

“From what I recall, your biology was just fine,” I blurt out without thinking.

He snorts a laugh. “That’s not what I meant. We live far longer than humans and Fae children are rare. The average couple has one child roughly every 250 years.”

“So?”

“So once committed, Fae males don’t leave their partners. Ever. There’s a kind of…shift that takes place once you meet the right person. Once that instinct kicks in, we become entirely loyal for the rest of our lives. It’s not a choice, it’s?—”

“An instinct,” I finish for him, thinking of the curse.

He grimaces, and I wonder if he’s also thinking about the curse. “Exactly.”

“And this is only the men, not the women?”

“No, it happens to the women too, but usually later—after the mating has taken place.” He coughs. “This isn’t exactly the point of the story.”

Maybe not, but it’s pretty much all I can think about now.

I suddenly remember what Odessa said about Fae males being possessive. Is this what she meant? Not just a cultural tendency toward aggression but an actual physical compulsion? I’ll have to ask her about it tomorrow because I’d die of embarrassment asking Daemon to elaborate…even though I really want to.

“Is that why the curse is broken by true love? Because Thorne didn’t love the sorceress?”

“I suppose.”

I ponder that for a moment. “So how did that send you to prison?”

Daemon runs a hand through his hair—something I’ve come to recognize as a nervous habit. “Once the curse was cast, thousands of people tried to leave Vernallis. They went to other kingdoms first, but discovered that the curse was not on the land but the people themselves. The only way to escape it was to go somewhere where magic couldn’t be used. There was suddenly a rush of people trying to go to the human world, and since I’d been there before and returned, I was primed to be the one to ferry them through the gate.”

“Is that not allowed?” I ask.

“It is. Not even the monarch can force anyone to stay here, but with such a large number of Fae leaving, the kingdom was in jeopardy. All the previously loyal citizens were leaving, and those who remained were starting to whisper that Thorne was not fit to be king and a new king would help end all the suffering. There hadn’t been a war in Ellender in centuries, but if one had broken out then, he didn’t have enough soldiers left to defend his throne.”

My eyes widen. I think I finally see where this is going, and how it all comes full circle. I remember again something Odessa said, Daemon can’t help but gather followers, even without meaning to.

“Were they looking to you to replace Thorne?”

There’s a pause, then he answers, “Exactly. I look like my father, who for all his faults was a popular ruler, and I’d been the head of the guard for some time. I already had more Fae loyal to me than I ever intended.”

“Were you going to do it? Be the king?”

He pauses. “Maybe. I never wanted the job—I still don’t—but I could see what the people were saying. Thorne had run the country into the ground and was digging deeper. I didn’t believe it was possible for him to love anyone but himself, and so yes, I was considering it, but before I could decide what to do, Thorne ambushed me.”

“There is a continent called Dyaspora just north of Thermia. It’s a barren, ice-covered rock that never thaws all year round. Nothing grows there, and the sun only rises for an hour or so each day, resulting in a never-ending winter. The only creatures who can live there for any length of time are monsters you couldn’t even imagine.”

“That doesn’t sound much better than death.”

“Worse.”

“But you survived for ninety years?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“A combination of things. I allied myself with Kastian. We knew each other informally before prison so it wasn’t difficult to become friends. Later, we met Fox and Jett and the four of us watched each other’s backs.” He clears his throat. “And even cursed, I have a lot of magic left.”

I hum, raising an eyebrow.

I believe him—but I also suspect the real reason he survived so long wasn’t just magic. It was loyalty. And leadership.

And now, knowing who his father was… I can see why Thorne was threatened by him.