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He didn’t immediately open the door, which made her wonder if someone else was with the king. But then he lifted his brows. “Careful, my lady.”

His words made her halt, her own brows flying up. “What?”

He glanced back at the door, lips twitching. “In a bit of a temper this morning, and I’m pretty sure it’s because you didn’t show up yesterday. He was muttering threats of revoking your wings if you’d gone off on your own half-cocked.”

“Oh.” Not exactly relief at those words. But not exactly dread. She smiled. “I didn’t. So my wings are probably still intact.”

Alexei looked dubious at best. “I’m just saying, for the good of the rest of us, don’t skip meetings. It makes him glare, and no one needs the most powerful man in the world glaring at them.”

She snorted a laugh. “Like he’d ever hurt anyone.”

“But he could, and we actually remember it when he’s in a foul mood.” Even so, Alexei’s lips lost their battle to a grin. “Have pity on us.” He reached now for the handle and swung the door open.

Arden rolled her eyes for his benefit, but the moment she stepped into Seidon’s office and the door snicked shut behind her again, any amusement turned to a lump in her throat.

He sat at his desk, which he so rarely did, scrolling through three different crystal projections. She half expected him to ignore her, or to send that glare Alexei had referenced at her.

Instead, he stood the moment she entered, leaning onto the palms he braced against his desk. “Please tell me you were only avoiding me and that you weren’t actually missing for the last thirty hours, off doing one of those scouting missions I strictly forbade.”

And just like that, any apprehension turned to a far more familiar, warm frustration. “That is so not fair. I was all set to deny that I was avoiding you, and then you go and present it as the lesser of two evils. Now what am I supposed to say?”

Geysers, one corner of his mouth moved up in a crooked smile, and she felt it in every nerve ending. He straightened and moved around his desk. “For starters, you could tell me where you were yesterday.”

“Nowhere. Just…” She waved a hand vaguely toward the window. “I told Ora to fly me somewhere no one ever went. We spent the day on that unoccupied island south of the main line of Barrier Banks.”

He moved way too fast. In that second she was looking toward the window, he’d somehow managed to get from the desk to right in front of her, and now before she could think to do something as reasonable as object, he had his arms around her and had crushed her to his chest. “Praise the Triada. I thought—no one knew where you were, your parents hadn’t seen you, Storm was on the Banks.

I thought you’d just gone. You scared a decade off my life. ”

She didn’t mean to hug him back. She just couldn’t help it. Her arms acted without any input from her brain, wrapping around him as tightly as his were around her. “Good thing you have the years to spare.”

He laughed into her hair. And then pulled back a few inches, gaze narrowed on her ear. “This is a new look for you.” Only when he lifted a finger and touched something not her hair did she remember the flower.

“Oh! A gift from a little girl in the market. Latitia.” She didn’t know why she said the name—it wasn’t as though he’d memorized the rosters of every citizen in the kingdom.

And yet his lips twitched again. “As in, Alexei’s daughter?”

She blinked. She hadn’t even known Alexei was married—he never volunteered a single fact about himself, and she never pushed him, because she knew well it was part of a Guardian’s training.

But now she felt like an utter dunce. “Is Alexei’s daughter an adorable little thing of maybe five years, with black ringlets and skin very nearly the same shade as mine? ”

“Mm hm.”

“Then…yeah, probably.”

He smiled and did something to the flower, likely securing it better. “I like it. Though if you didn’t even know who she was, I’m curious as to how her flower ended up in your hair.”

As if she was going to tell him about that conversation.

Especially when he still had his arm anchored around her waist and her pulse was thundering in her veins.

“I think it’s more for you, really,” she said, trying to put a few inches of space between them.

“If I’m not mistaken, she has a bit of a crush on you.

No doubt waiting to grow up so she can catch up to you and win your heart. ”

Skies, it was the wrong tease to offer, she knew it the moment his eyes moved back to her face. She could have sworn they burned straight through her. “My apologies to sweet little Latitia,” he said, voice low, “but I don’t intend to be available when she grows up.”

He wouldn’t be. He’d be married to Jade.

She chanted it silently a few more times and then pushed a full step away from him, clearing her throat and reaching for the crystals in her pocket.

“Speaking of Jade—there’s news from Kiyana.

” For the sake of her sanity, she strode toward the desk and its readers.

He followed, too closely. “We weren’t speaking of Jade.”

“In fact we were. Which of these can I use?” She motioned toward the readers, all of which had crystals in them already.

He pulled a blue one out and tossed it to the desk, its projection vanishing. He waved the other images down too. “In fact we weren’t.”

She pushed the lavender crystal Kiyana had given her into the reader. “Well, we are now. Prince Finn introduced her to his court yesterday—as his future queen.”

Kiyana had given her a brief summary of the events, but the woman’s rushed words couldn’t actually prepare her for the images in the recording. Arden’s breath caught as Jade moved into frame.

Jade . She was there, right there, in the space above Seidon’s desk. Wearing a flowing emerald gown that made her hair all the redder, turned her skin to glowing alabaster, and made jewels of her eyes.

Arden leaned in as the recording zoomed in on her sister’s face.

Beautiful as ever—but far too controlled.

Arden knew this face, of course, this mask.

It was the one Jade always donned when one of the island boys got a bit too ardent and she had to gently push him away.

The face that they’d always joked would be her political face, her ambassador’s face.

Perfect peace, perfect decorum, no feeling.

Prince Finn stood from his throne, welcomed Jade to his side, and kissed her.

Kissed her! Even knowing what had happened, she couldn’t stop the sharp inhale, nor the slice of its dagger. It was a claiming, she knew that. Nothing more. And that’s why it hurt. Jade deserved to be a queen, yes, but not like this. Not for power. Not as a political maneuver.

Seidon’s hand had found her back. She wasn’t honestly sure when, she only grew aware of it when he rubbed it in a soothing circle between her shoulder blades.

Her eyes slid shut for a moment. This was the start, really.

Even if Seidon didn’t realize it yet. This was the first time he’d seen Jade as anything more than a still image.

But watching the grace of her limbs, seeing how her beauty only increased with movement, he’d begin to understand why she was so perfect.

He’d begin to realize that he needed her, not Finn.

The recording of the prince spoke, introducing Jade as his next queen. During the wild applause, Seidon shook his head. “Bleu, not Calimore. He doesn’t know her real name.”

She risked a glance over and up at his face. “Is that significant?”

He shrugged. “It’s information. It means that their reconnaissance before the kidnapping wasn’t as thorough as they probably think it was. And she hasn’t corrected them, which I daresay means she’s playing everything as close to her chest as she can, not knowing what may help her.”

She’d expect nothing less of her sister. But before she could muse on the mer’s reconnaissance, the next portion of the presentation began, the one that Kiyana had told her about in a strained whisper, her eyes flashing with a combination of fear and awe.

“What are they doing?” Seidon murmured, learning closer to the image as his hand went still on her back.

She already knew, because Kiyana had told her. But she didn’t answer, waiting to see what it would look like. And see they did, when hair and clothing began to blow in clear patterns.

This time Seidon was the one to suck in a quick breath. His hand dropped from between her shoulders, though only to land again at the small of her back. “Air. She’s controlling the air. They Awakened her?”

He turned it up like a question, but he couldn’t expect her to have any more answer than he did.

“So it seems,” she whispered, a moment before the prince spoke again.

She felt Seidon tense beside her with each added sentence, and when Finn all but declared that he and Jade were going to take Seidon’s crown from him, the very deliberate relaxation he forced was a clearer shout to her of his alarm than a literal yell would have been.

Arden half-turned toward him as the recording stopped. “She won’t do it. She would never, never move against us. You have to trust that. Perhaps she’ll let them train her, but there is no world in which my sister would betray you.”

Seidon breathed a laugh. “Your sister doesn’t know me. It’s you she would never betray. Your parents. Storm.”

“You. You are her king. Yours is her kingdom. Her greatest dream was to serve you beneath the waves, not to—”