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I lost Callista. She was not in her room. I knocked again to be sure, but I didn’t even hear rustling or walking. And it was dinner time. Usually the twins at least visited with her while she ate, even if they saved their meal for the dining hall.

But I heard nothing.

I felt nothing either. Maybe the faintest background anxiety, but no more than when she tried to play that wretched lute. I really should do something about that.

I had to find her first.

I should have relaxed knowing that she was not stressed. That should have indicated she was safe. But I did not like not knowing where she was. There were too many people in the fortress who I did not trust to be near her. Perhaps I should have stayed in the room again today…

No. It had been good for me to be outside when Fagan had taken her to the gardens. I did not know how someone as gentle as Fagan could have made her nervous, but I felt her calm down when I flew by.

And now she was missing.

I stormed onto the dais in the dining hall. Fagan, Mylo, and Acantha stood as I approached our table. “Where is she?”

I intended the words to come out as a soft menace, but a hush spread across the entire hall as soon as I finished. Maybe I growled a little.

“I assume you mean Callista?” Fagan practically whispered—nobody in the main hall could have heard him.

“Who else would I have meant?” I made no attempt to whisper.

My favorite advisor inclined his head politely. “Jolter told me he and Koan would be guarding her until after dinner. They did not intend to spend the night in the hall unless Mylo asked them to.”

I scanned the hoard of tables below me. She would never agree to eat with them—she thought they all hated her.

Fagan stepped closer to me and lowered his voice even more. “Your Majesty, can you not tell if she is in distress?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. I would not confirm such a thing in front of Acantha. He should have known better than to ask. “I will not eat until I know she is safe.”

Corridors and rooms blurred past me as I stalked the fortress halls. Where was she? How could Koan and Jolter have not reported their plans to Mylo? Why—

A shot of laughter trickled down a hall where a kitchen servant came from. He bowed to me awkwardly over an empty tray, and then hurried toward the kitchen. I pushed aside my annoyance at the servant’s obvious discomfort around me—I’d only ever protected my people—and pressed into the hall .

The servant had closed the door behind him, but Koan’s laughter filtered through the wall. I reached for the door, ready to throw it open and demand Callista’s location, when I heard a feminine laugh. It wasn’t loud or carefree like Koan’s carefully honed performative expressions, but it was cautious and genuinely entertained.

And it sounded like it could have come from Callista.

Had I never heard her laugh?

I froze with my hand above the door handle and listened. What could have brought a happy sound to her lips?

“You should have seen the cook, though.” Jolter’s slightly more subdued voice joined the fray. “I don’t think he’d ever seen anyone walk into his kitchen on his hands before.”

Callista laughed again, along with several others. I tipped my head against the door so I could hear better. As the laughter died down, she sighed. “This was so lovely. I’m glad you convinced me to come.”

A new voice answered. “We’re glad you came too. You’re the first human or fae I’ve met.” Hemmer. Another young elf trapped inside the curse, but one who did not normally spend much time in the fortress.

“What he means is, thank you for the invitation.” Jemma, Hemmer’s sister. “We should probably cross the bridge before it gets too late.”

“If you want to stop by the dining hall and visit with anyone else, you can,” Koan said. “We’re going to take Callista back to her room, but we’ll go kick up the party there for a bit before we go to bed.”

Interesting. Koan was spending time with lesser nobles now.

“You don’t want to go to the main hall?” Hemmer asked.

Callista answered. “No. Most of the elves there hate me.”

“Not most,” Jolter corrected. “Just a few that are loudly obnoxious about it.”

She huffed. “Still no.”

Chairs scraped the floor, and I darted down the hall and around the corner. They did not need to know I’d been there.

An hour later I approached her room with a plate of lemons. Mylo stood in the hall and made a pointed look at the fruit in my hand. “Are those… lemons?”

I raised my chin, daring him to challenge my right to have lemons in my own fortress.

“Isn’t it a little early for lemons?”

My eyes skittered down the hall. It was unnecessary, but they wanted to confirm nobody was listening. “I had the greenhouses move a lemon tree inside and begin nudging it to ripen early several weeks ago.”

His left cheek lifted in a far-too-entertained smirk. “Your Majesty, if you’d like to win the lovely fae’s favor, I could make several suggestions that would go over better than the most sour fruit we grow.”

A growl almost escaped my throat. “I happen to know she likes them.”

He laughed as he bowed his head. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

My growl would have had anyone besides Mylo running for cover. He just kept laughing as he waved at her door. “Let me know how it goes.”

I looked down my nose at him. “You’re dismissed. I’ll secure her room for the night. Make sure someone is here before I go to the gardens to shift in the morning.”

Once Mylo was gone, I knocked on Callista’s door.

Her eyes widened when she saw me, but then they settled onto my plate of lemons, and her whole face exploded in a smile. Her hands flew to her mouth, and she smiled through her fingers. And I…

I felt her happiness. It bubbled through the mistek bond like a light and airy mist, an emotion so strong it bled into the cursed magic that tied us together. Fear and pain had been the only emotions I’d felt through the bond until now. Why hadn’t I felt her happiness before?

Because she hadn’t been so happy since she came here. The realization hit me like a sledgehammer in the gut, making me want to crumple but also to stand and find something else to give her a little more joy.

I lifted the plate toward her. “I brought you some lemons.”

Her smile was so big, so genuine, and so full that it swept my breath away. What would it be like to smile with your whole face?

She took the plate with one hand and used her other to raise a lemon to her nose and inhale all its tart citrus aroma. I assumed she intended to eat them, but… was she going to bite into it?

“Do you eat the peels?” I asked.

Her nose wrinkled and she laughed. “No. Normally I— Well, honestly, I do a lot of things with them. ”

“Like what?”

She rubbed the lemon with a thumb. “In the summer, I’ll put them in rice or cakes or tarts or, my favorite, is in lemonade.”

“Lemonade? Is that a drink?”

“Is that a drink?” Her jaw dropped. “What kind of question is that?”

“I can’t imagine drinking lemons.”

She chuckled. “What do you do with them?”

“We use the oils to make soaps and candles. It smells lovely, but it does not taste good.”

She laughed, stepped away from her room, and closed the door behind herself.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“We’re going to have a cultural experience.” Her laughter turned shy, but she met my eyes. “Will you take me to your kitchens and enjoy some lemonade with me? Please?”

“Of course.” I would do anything she asked. Had she not realized that yet? Jolter had. I offered her an arm, and she tucked her hand inside my elbow.

We’d only gone a few steps when she asked, “Lemons aren’t toxic to elves, or anything like that, are they?”

I chuckled. “No, not that I’m aware of. Why do you ask?”

She blew out a quick burst of air and stepped a little faster. “I don’t want to poison you just because I like lemons. We’re not exactly the same… I mean, there must be some differences in elves and fae and humans… right?”

She looked up at me, and those bright blue eyes lit a fire in my chest. Her words asked me to confirm that we were different, but I could not do it. All I saw was a person I wanted to love. A person who made my heart burn. “Firehawk,” I whispered.

She tipped her head, and her smile returned. “What?”

A smile grew on my face. She normally put on such a show of confidence that I found her confusion immensely entertaining. “You’re a firehawk.”

She turned away from me and kept walking. “I don’t think I know that bird.”

“They’re gorgeous,” I explained. “Stunning birds with impressive spirit and fight, bold, resourceful hunters, but also sometimes problematic. They’ve been known to start fires deliberately.”

She pulled her hand out of my elbow and walked faster. “I do not start fires.”

I grinned. “I think you do. And they’re big, beautiful—”

She turned and faced me with glassy eyes, and I stopped talking.

She blinked furiously and her voice quivered. “Fine. Maybe I do. But maybe those fires aren’t all disasters. Maybe sometimes they’re good.”

What had I done? “Callista, I— I think I implied something that I did not mean to…”

A sadness slipped through the bond, choking out my words. I’d made her sad. “I meant everything I just said as a good thing. I don’t know how—”

“In what world is starting fires a good thing? You specifically said it was problematic.”

“They do it to chase prey out of the grasses. It’s incredibly clever.”

“Then why problematic ?”

“Callista, you’re not problematic—”

“I know very well that I’m problematic.”

“What?”

“I know that I start fires! I know that almost everything I do ends in disaster. I don’t need you to reinforce that!”

“Woah.” I stopped walking. “I do not think that at all.”

“Then why did you say it?”

“Because—” I could not tell her that she lit my heart on fire. She deserved better than to deal with a broken, cursed king falling for her. But I could not have her thinking that I thought that she was a walking disaster.

I turned her toward me and held her shoulders while my mind scrambled for the right words. She stared at the plate in her hands, so I whispered. “Because you have a strength that lights up the darkest corridors.”

Her breath stilled, like she was holding it, waiting to see what I would say next.

“Firehawk. You have a brightness that burns through the shadows that obscure happiness and kindness. You have chased those sweet moments out of hidden corners and into the open.” She lifted wary eyes up until they met mine. “We…”

No, I would not hide behind general group language when she risked everything she was every moment she was here. “I have needed your brazen flames.”

“Really?” she breathed.

I nodded. “Yes. I swore, thirteen years ago, to never lie—or deceive the way I did then—again. Whatever else you might wonder, do not question this: I appreciate what you’ve done since you’ve come here. ”

She relaxed her shoulders and tipped her lips into a small smile. “Thank you.”

I dipped my head. “It is the truth.” I pointed a hand down the hall. “Now, do I get to sample this… is it a fae or human drink?”

“Human.” She looped her arm back in mine, sniffed, and talked again. “Well, I think the fae have a different version that they mix with some kind of magical liquors or something, but the story is my grandmother loved lemons because they were one of very few fruits that grew in both her native fae kingdom and here. She died when my mother was young, but not too young to have learned to love lemons. Then, my mother married a human and moved to the other side of the river, and he introduced her to lemonade.”

Her voice warmed with a smile. “She might have added magic to it or something, but I can make it very close to how she did, which—” She tipped her head at me and gave me a side-eye. “—is actually a big deal because most of the things I try to make do end in a disaster. Alastor has been using magic to help with my cooking for thirteen years.”

“Ah, I see the… um… source of our miscommunication.”

She ducked her head. “I… might be a little sensitive about it. That, and—” We stopped in front of the kitchen door, but I did not open it. I wanted her to finish what she was saying. “—and I do make a lot of disasters. Just since you’ve met me—I thought I’d rescue Alastor, and I ended up getting bound to a drekkan. I thought I’d found my mother, and I nearly got roasted by giant crabs.” She shrugged.

I shook my head. “You did save your brother. I—” Shame burned my throat, but I would be honest with her. “I would have killed him if you hadn’t come. And the rose bush did lead you to information about your mother, to my eternal dishonor. You have also helped the D’Aeran twins grow up and… you’ve helped me. Do not make light of the good you’ve done.”

A loud voice came through the kitchen door just before Forten threw it open. “What’s going on out— Oh! Your Majesty.” He bowed and glanced at Callista before returning his focus to me. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“Have you met Callista?”

She dropped into a quick curtsy and bobbed her head. He returned her gesture with a bow, nearly as deep as the one he gave me. “I’m Forten, Head Cook at Sirun.”

She grinned. “I’m Callista, resident Firehawk and lemonade lover.”

He relaxed into a smile. “I, too, love the firehawks, though I do not usually bring them into my kitchen.”

I leaned closer. “I invited Callista to show me how a human drink called lemonade is made.”

His eyebrows pressed together. “Your Majesty, I don’t normally allow anyone in my kitchen. I would never refuse you , but—”

I did not let him finish. “Then you will bring us in now and show us everything she needs.”

He dipped his head, but Callista set a hand on my forearm. “Master Forten, I don’t need much. If you’d rather, I’d be happy to carry the supplies back to my room.”

His expression flitted anxiously from her to me. “I wouldn’t want to create any trouble for you. Come in.”

Her hand tightened on my arm, and even though I wore sleeves, the contact thrilled me. After everything, she still touched me. And her touch made it clear that we were not going to impose on the cook.

“It’s no trouble,” she said. “All I need are some glasses, water, sugar, and forks.” I should have known she would insist on making the elf comfortable.

His anxious look shifted to a kinder smile. “What if I gather the supplies for you and set you up on a counter away from where I’m working? I find myself curious about this human drink. Perhaps you would let me taste it too?”

She grinned. “I would love to.”

He opened the door wider. “I have three cooks who help me, but besides us, nobody else has been in these kitchens for years. You are about to see one of the great secrets of Sirun.”

Was that true? Despite being the High King of Hemlit, had I really not seen the inside of the kitchen of my own fortress?

He was right. The last time I could remember walking through these doors was as a youth with Robin. Forten waved at his cooks and spoke to Callista. “All four of us have a lot of practice with fire magic, but each of us also has another skill that helps the process. Ruby has an unusual sense of smell and can predict how flavors will mix based on it. Baryl is gifted with plants and can manipulate vegetables and grains to a degree most others cannot.”

A shorter elf looked up from a griddle with flatbread on it. “Mena is rather secretive about her magic, so I’ll let her share if she gets a chance.”

“And what about you, Master Forten?” Callista asked.

“I have some unusual skills with matter. It is most helpful in aging and marinating meats. I can speed the smoking process for a lamb, from all day to half an hour.”

“That’s amazing.” She scanned the busy kitchen. I’d forgotten how large it was. The four elves each had plenty of workspace, and the walls were lined with pots and pans organized by size.

Forten brought her to a bar stool behind a counter. “We have the best setup a cook could wish for, though sometimes the team wishes we had premade treats to keep them energetic. The evenings get busy here.” He handed Callista a knife and a small pitcher, and then he turned around and gathered supplies from cupboards and shelves.

Callista cut a lemon in half and handed it to me. “Do you want to do the honors?”

I took it from her. “Do the honors?”

“Of squeezing the juice into the pitcher.” She cut another lemon in half and demonstrated. I copied her, pressing three times as much juice out as she did. She laughed and handed me her halves. “Maybe you should do them all. I never considered my hands as weak until just now.”

“It is hardly a fair comparison.” I squeezed the juice out of all six lemons as she handed me the halves. “Elves are known for being stronger than humans, and you said you’re basically a human with fae ears.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’ve been told to keep my heritage a secret, you know. My parents said it was dangerous for people to know. I was awfully mad at you for announcing it the moment we arrived here.”

I emptied the last lemon of all juice. “I apologize. I did not realize at the time. I will refrain from announcing it now.”

She laughed. “It hardly matters now. Everyone here knows.”

Forten returned with a smirk, clearly listening to our conversation. He gestured at the pitcher. “Is this just lemon juice so far?”

She nodded and took a glass mixing bowl. “I’m going to add the water and sugar in here—if one of you could heat it up so it dissolves into a sort of syrup, that would be perfect.”

I pointed a finger at the mixture, more for her benefit than anything. I could heat a mixture without gesturing. I added the heat unevenly, so it forced the sugar water into a stirring motion that dissolved quickly.

She grinned. “That would be so handy.”

I raised a brow. “Heating water?”

“Magic, in general. Anyway—” She poured the syrup into the lemon juice. “This obviously makes it taste better, since your elven tongues prefer sweets.”

“My elven tongue enjoys many foods that are not sweet,” I corrected.

“Sorry,” she said, stirring the mixture with a long fork. “What drinks do you enjoy, again, that are not sweet?”

We had many teas, but I did add sugar to them.

She set her fork down and gave me a triumphant smile. “Exactly.”

Forten blurted out a gusty laugh, and I threw a glare at him.

“Sorry, Your Majesty. I just… I’ve never…” He turned to Callista. “Is that everything?”

“No, we’ll want a little more water and ice, if you like your drinks cold.”

Forten filled a cup with water and handed it to her. While she added it to the pitcher, he said, “I can remove heat from the pitcher when you’re done, as can the king.”

She chuckled. “Of course. I should have remembered.” She raised her eyes to me, and I chilled the drink.

“That’s it, gentlemen,” she declared. “Lemonade! ”

So she sweetened the lemons to make them palatable—not so different from what we did to tea. I poured three glasses, nearly to the brim. Normally, I would have excluded Forten, but Callista had brought him into our cultural experience.

“Those are very full glasses for never having tried it before,” she said with a lilt to her voice that almost suggested she was teasing. Had anyone teased me before? Not since Robin had been here.

“I told you I would enjoy it,” I reminded her.

She burst into such a laugh that I felt it through the bond. That was twice in one night. I was both proud to have managed it, but also concerned that I did not understand the source of her humor well enough to duplicate it.

She was still so unpredictable to me… though I did not hate it the way I had at first. It felt more like a challenge—a mystery to unravel. What made her happy? What made her laugh?

I raised my glass in a small cheer. “To better understanding.”

“Hear, hear!’ Forten added his.

Another burst of Callista’s heated happiness traveled through the bond as she added, “And friends in new places.”

The next twenty minutes had left a nearly constant flow of hopeful happiness in Callista—I wanted to stay in the kitchen forever and listen to her laugh and chat with the cooks. She’d insisted on sharing with all four of them, and everyone liked the human drink enough that we mixed up another pitcher of it .

Eventually, though, Forten told us he was falling behind. When he abandoned our party, Callista insisted we leave so we did not make the cook’s job too difficult. It was strange to be forced to consider the difficulty of the work of people in my castle that I had never worried about before, but as we traveled back to our rooms, such thoughts kept breaking into my mind.

I’d considered the cooks’ safety. I worked hard for it. I wanted all my servants, regardless of their pay, to be safe. I’d felt bad for every family and schedule I’d disrupted with my curse. But I’d never thought of their convenience outside of the barrier’s separation.

As we entered our corridor, I slowed. I’d enjoyed knowing her emotions had been positive tonight, but I also knew the nature of the magic that bound us… and it wasn’t kind or just.

And if justice and kindness were objects of my pursuit, I needed to do something about it.

With Callista’s hand on my arm, it was easy to stop her a few feet away from her door.

She turned to face me. “Thank you, Aedan. I’ve really missed that, and it was a lot of fun to share it with you and the others.”

My mind was preoccupied with how to explain my thoughts, so I just nodded in response. How did one bring up something as awkward as a slave bond?

“Well, goodnight, then.” She let go of me and started toward her door.

I grabbed her arm. “Wait, Callista. Please.” I slid my hand down to hold hers, a desperate attempt to delay the words that had not organized themselves in my mind yet.

She froze, almost too still.

I dropped her hand. “I… need to talk to you.”

She turned back to look at me, concern etching in between her eyes. “Is something wrong?”

“No, I… Actually, yes. Yes, something is wrong.” That was as good a way to begin as any. “I will not hurt you, Callista, not now, not ever.” I took a step closer to her. “I would do everything in my power to keep you safe.”

A small smile turned her lips up, just barely touching her eyes. “I believe you. But I don’t see how that’s something wrong.”

“Because you are here specifically as collateral. Your entire presence is based on the idea that I will…” I couldn’t say it. It was so gross that it turned my stomach. The elf I was a few weeks ago made me sick.

I shook my head. “I want to free you from our agreement. I don’t care if your brother comes and burns down my roses. You will be safe from me and anything or anyone I can protect you from.”

She blinked, and tears rushed the edges of her eyes, but a flood of happiness spilled into the bond. She brought a hand to cover her trembling lips. “Thank you,” she whispered into her fingers. “That means more to me than I think you can possibly know.”

My heart lunged for those tears. I hated to see her cry, and it seemed like such a conflict with the feelings I could identify in the bond. I stepped even closer, and dried her cheeks with my thumbs, brushing the back of her hand—still over her mouth—with my palm.

“There’s more,” I whispered. “The mistek bond is a corruption of magic. Bonds between elves are meant to be beautiful, shared experiences. Twisting the magic into a bond of submission is wrong.”

She sniffed. “But you haven’t made me submit at all. Ever. Not once. You must have an enormous amount of control of your magic, because even in your bossiest moments you never used any magic to force me to do anything.”

A soft, disgusted grunt escaped me. “An honorable beast, huh?”

A deep, small chuckle lodged in her throat. “It would seem.”

I shook my head slowly, brushing another rogue tear off one of her cheeks. “It’s not enough. I would like to remove the bond entirely. Will you let me put my hand on your back?”

She stepped away from me, pressing her back to the door. My hands fell away from her face, and she shook her head quickly.

“Why? I—” I had stepped closer to her without thinking and reached for her face again. She closed her eyes, so I stopped, frozen by her uncertainty. “Why would you not want to be free?”

Her eyes opened, the clear blue crystals covered with a light sheen of moisture. “Your offering means everything,” she whispered, “but… how did you know that I needed help with the karkins on the bridge?”

“I felt your fear.”

“Through the bond?”

I nodded.

“What about when Lady Carmine threatened me?”

I nodded again.

“Or when I was scared on the balcony?”

Another nod.

“Or the very first night when I was frightened in the dungeon?”

My neck burned, but I nodded again. I could tell where she was going with this, and I did not like it.

“So, you have essentially rescued me at least four times because the bond alerted you to my danger. I don’t want to give that up. I… need you.” My heart sank. I did not want her to need me to be a monster. “Especially if you care enough to keep me safe the way you just promised, I need you to know when I need that help.”

How was I supposed to become a better elf if she insisted I do horrible things? “So you want me to remain unjust and cruel? I’m sure I can protect you without it.”

She shook her head, but her voice wavered. “You wouldn’t have known I was in trouble before without the bond. It is neither unjust nor cruel if you do not take advantage of its dark possibilities. You are actually showing an even greater kindness by refusing the possibilities that are in front of you. By resisting the bad and using the good.”

My temper roared to life. I stepped closer to her and hissed, “It is a perversion of goodness.”

“It’s your own fault!” she hissed back. I fell back on my heels, and she attacked. Her tiny firehawk nature reared to life. “You made coming here my only choice. The cursed barrier has regrown, so I cannot go home. If you take away the bond now, I’ll have no way to reach out when things go wrong. No option besides screaming and hoping someone within hearing range cares enough to help.”

My heart twisted at that image. No, I could not leave her alone like that.

“If that is what you want,” she added, “fine. You are the king.” She stepped away from the door and closer to me. Very close. Our chests nearly touched, and I could easily reach her back. The air between us charged. I wanted to wrap my arms around her—both to keep her away from dangers and keep her to myself. But I did not have permission for that .

So I stood still, waiting to see what her purpose was. “You are the king,” she repeated, “And I am just a girl who crossed your path—”

I could not ignore that. I gripped her shoulders as carefully as I could with the heat running through my veins. “There is nothing just about you.”

“Regardless,” she breathed at me, “your will supersedes mine. You have all the control here. Do what you want. Just know that I would prefer the security of having this connection to you while I am in your land.”

I dropped my hands from her shoulders and stepped backward. “I will never supersede your will simply because I am king.”

“Why not?”

“Because I—” I could not tell her I cared about her. It would be too awkward, too strange. She did not need that complication. But did that omission cross into the deception that I had sworn never to embrace?

I would have to think through that. I settled on, “Because I want you to feel safe. You cannot feel safe if you think I will overrule you anytime we disagree.” That was true.

I lifted a hand toward hers, and she set her fingers on mine. I wrapped my hands around hers, and bowed my head over them. “Forgive my reaction, Callista,” I whispered. “I am trying to control the fires that burn to life so quickly inside me.” I straightened up and returned her hand. “I will, of course, leave the bond if that is your preference.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. And then she turned and fled into her room.