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At first glance, the nobility of the Fey Imperium appear to follow a structure familiar to most human monarchies—titles like Duke, Marquess, and Baron are common enough to lull one into a false sense of understanding. But as with most things Fey, the truth is both stranger and older than it seems.

Their King and Queen are not merely rulers by bloodline or conquest. They are the living embodiments of their gods, vessels through which divine will is made manifest. These monarchs, along with their divine Council, sit atop a vast hierarchy spanning twelve Dominions, each ruled by a powerful ducal order, each with its own customs, its own burdens, and its own bitter rivalries.

Even their language of succession reflects a depth we struggle to match. There is a word—long, elegant, and entirely untranslatable—that denotes the chosen inheritor of a Dominion. I will not attempt it. For the sake of this account, I’ll simply use the word prince.

It is not quite accurate, but close enough in spirit. After all, what is a prince if not the one born to inherit everything?

-An excerpt from Tales of the Twelve Houses: A Human Scholar’s Account

What was it like being a prince?

For Skye, there were two answers to that question.

First, there was the carefully curated canned response created by his family’s PR team.

A script he’d been forced to memorize the moment he learned how to speak and had now delivered so many times that he sometimes found himself mumbling about the importance of legacy and the responsibility of wealth and privilege in his sleep.

And then there was what he was really thinking every time some idiot reporter asked him that same inane question.

What was it like being a prince?

Well, to be honest, it was bullshit.

His childhood was a hellish nightmare. One filled with bodies, blood, loneliness, and despair.

Children were rare among the Fey, with fewer and fewer being born each year.

No one knew why, but the problem had now reached a critical level for the twelve great and noble Houses.

The nobility depended on bloodline and lineage to secure their power.

For these families, there was no greater treasure, no greater asset, absolutely nothing to rival the importance of guaranteeing the next generation.

Skye’s birth ended a centuries-long succession crisis in Ghislain. The papers called him a golden boy, a pureblooded miracle to secure Ghislain’s power into the next myria-millennium at least.

It was good to feel wanted—but not this way…

The first assassination attempt came five minutes after Skye was delivered. One of the menders attending his mother tried to smother him while cleaning off the afterbirth.

By the age of one, he’d been through two nannies.

Skye couldn’t remember their faces and only really knew what he’d been told.

The first died taste-testing poisoned breast milk; the second, when a pacifier rigged to explode went off in her hands.

Skye was found sitting in the middle of the carnage, covered in blood and finger-painting with her entrails.

The years passed, and the bodies piled up around him. It was a constant, revolving door of faces. By age four, he’d been through ten more nannies and 212 bodyguards, or roughly one for every week of his short life.

Nobody ever stayed. Nothing was permanent.

Except for Orin.

Skye was never allowed in public spaces—the chance of one of their rivals using the anonymity of the crowd was too great.

Instead, he had a body double for when the family travelled.

They would dress them in identical outfits, glamour away Orin’s human eyes and ears.

And, while he played the role of prince for the adoring public, Skye would be quietly moved behind the scenes.

Because they were the same age, they were allowed to play together, take classes together. They were friends experiencing the newness of life together, every day adding the first brushstrokes onto the canvas of their story.

Because of Orin, Skye was never lonely. Indeed, he was never alone.

During the kidnapping drills, the martial arts training, they even slept in adjacent rooms. And maybe it was because of that proximity that Orin survived for as long as he did.

At that point, Skye was still na?ve enough to believe that he could be happy.

That even in a life where all the people kept changing, there could still be something good.

Orin lasted long enough that Skye forgot for a moment—he was a prince.

Soon enough, the world reminded him.

Orin died walking in the official procession leading into Skye’s Attunement Ceremony. Skye was already inside the temple, but he remembered hearing three short pops from outside before utter chaos erupted.

The guards swept into motion, ushering him out.

The priestesses were screaming. The crowd outside was roaring.

He remembered the smell of blood and the brief glimpse of his father’s seneschal as he swept through the doors of the antechamber where they’d been preparing, carrying a limp body in his arms.

There was a different boy after that—the very next day, in fact.

Apparently, several had been purchased at the time of Skye’s birth just for this purpose.

All trained to look like him, talk like him, walk like him—like little clones.

It was almost like Orin never left. His family was, if anything, well prepared for a crisis. And the message was clear.

Those boys were dispensable. He was not.

He was a prince.

The second boy—Sensa—only lasted a week. Skye stopped learning their names after that.

The next morning, the storm was still out there, hammering against the rickety stable. Yet despite the gloom, the damp chill, and the walls that seemed to press in tighter with each passing day, Skylen Emrys climbed the ladder into the hayloft and smiled at the sight that greeted him.

Taly lay on her stomach, socked feet kicking behind her as she studied the map spread across the floor. Her shirt had ridden up, just enough to expose the lower curve of her back.

Her ass deserved its own religion. One he was already halfway to founding.

Toned. Tight. Shifting with every lazy kick of her feet.

There was a time when he would’ve ignored it.

Forced himself to look away before his brain fully processed just how much he liked that view.

And when that failed, he made excuses. Convinced himself he was just appreciating her discipline.

Her dedication to training. Her deep commitment to leg day.

That lie had worked for years—right up until he was forced to admit it wasn’t the structural integrity of her squat form he’d been admiring. He was just staring at her ass.

But now? Now, he didn’t have to pretend anymore.

Now, he could look .

And Shards help him, that’s exactly what he did.

“I assume Kato’s still breathing?” she said in greeting.

Skye toed off his boots and dropped onto the bedroll beside her. “Against all odds,” he muttered. “Though it was touch and go there for a while.”

Taly snorted.

Skye stretched out beside her, sliding an arm around her waist as he leaned in to peer over her shoulder at the map.

He’d already learned the hard way that Taly’s standards for cartography far exceeded his own.

For a salvager, a map was more than just parchment and ink—it was a record of survival, scrawled in hard-won blood and sweat.

And she’d made it very clear which areas his was deficient.

“Ten tears?” she’d scoffed, turning the paper over like there might be more written on the back. “That’s not a map. That’s a eulogy.”

Her old map, now lost, had boasted sixty-five, plus a detailed catalog of sinkholes, ruins, and every other half-buried hazard she’d encountered.

Now, she was recreating it from memory, scribbling notes furiously into the margins.

“The roads are a no-go,” she said.

“Why?”

Her quill paused. “I don’t know. Exactly.” She sighed, rubbing her eyes. “I had a dream last night, and I was standing on the road. I don’t remember what I saw, but when I woke up, I had this really bad feeling.”

Skye was still adjusting to it—the way Taly had gone from his fiercely stubborn human best friend to someone who could bend time itself.

He didn’t understand how her visions worked—what the difference was between the ones that came when she was awake and the ones that came in dreams. What he did know was that she couldn’t just flip a switch and know everything. It was fragments, glimpses, pieces that didn’t always fit.

It killed him to see that edge of frustration when they didn’t.

“If you say the roads are no good, then I believe you.” His hand slid beneath her shirt, thumb grazing the soft line of her waist. A little lower and he’d be in holy territory—but Taly was still shy, still startled when touch came too casually, so he held the line.

“You’re overthinking it. Go with your gut.

It’s always been better than most people’s best plans. ”

Some of the tension eased from her shoulders. “It’s not going to be easy with Kato’s leg,” she said, worrying her bottom lip. “The forest route is rocky and uneven. And riddled with wyvern nests. It’s their mating season.”

She tilted her head, and a lock of hair slipped aside, baring the soft curve just below her ear—skin thin enough to see her pulse flicker there.

“We might consider giving Kato’s leg another day to heal.”

“Hmm.” That was the best he had to offer as he brushed her hair aside, leaning in to follow the line of her throat with his nose. He stopped just beneath her ear, where her scent was strongest—jasmine, mint, and something wilder, like ozone after a lightning strike.

“Is that a yes?”

He pressed his lips to that spot, heat meeting heat.

“Em?”

He knew for a fact she’d said something, but his brain only registered the small hitch in her voice, the flush of want that suffused that already mouth-watering scent.