"I was sorry to hear about your loss, Lady Nesilhan." Yasar's voice carries across the table, soft enough to seem private despite six other people listening. "Losing a child is a grief that transcends courts and politics."
My hand stills halfway to my wine glass, and beside me, I feel Elçin tense with protective fury. Through the bond, Kaan's rage spikes so violently that frost spreads across the table in spiderwebbing patterns.
"You know nothing of my grief." Each word comes out precise. Controlled. A blade wrapped in silk. "Unless you've lost a child, I suggest you keep your sympathies to yourself."
The hall goes silent. Yasar doesn't flinch. Instead, something shifts in his expression—that carefully cultivated charm cracking just enough to reveal genuine pain underneath.
"I've lost a child," he says quietly. "Three hundred years ago. A daughter. She died before she took her first breath, and her mother followed three days later. The grief nearly destroyed me."
The honesty in his voice stops my next cruel remark before it forms. Because beneath the polished surface, beneath the calculated charm, I hear authentic anguish. The kind that doesn't fade, just learns to wear different masks.
"I'm sorry." The words surprise me as they emerge. "That's... I'm sorry that happened to you."
"Thank you." His smile is sad, brittle at the edges. "I tell you this not to compare pain—no two losses are the same—but so you know that when I express sympathy, it comes from true understanding. You don't have to carry this alone, my lady. Some burdens are too heavy for solitary grief."
Something in my chest fractures. Just a hairline crack in the armor I've built around my ruined heart, but enough that tears prickle behind my eyes. I blink them back furiously, refusing to break in front of this room.
"Nesilhan carries nothing alone." Kaan's voice could freeze blood. His shadows have consumed half the hall now. "She has me. She has this court. She doesn't require comfort from visiting relatives with convenient timing."
"Of course," Yasar concedes smoothly, though his eyes never leave mine. "I merely offer perspective from someone who understands what it means to lose everything that matters and find a way to survive anyway."
The pull intensifies. That magnetic force drawing me toward him, making me want to lean across this table and...
And what? Ask him how he survived? Beg him to tell me it gets easier? Confess that some nights I lie awake wishing the knife had found my heart instead of my womb?
"Enough." The word tears from my throat. I stand abruptly, my chair scraping against stone. "I've lost my appetite. If you'll excuse me."
"Nesilhan." Kaan reaches for my arm, but I pull away before he can make contact.
"Don't touch me."
I flee the hall with as much dignity as I can salvage, Elçin's footsteps following close behind. But even as I put distance between myself and that cursed dinner, I feel it—that invisible thread connecting me to Yasar, growing tauter with each step.
Like something fundamental in my being recognizes him. Needs him. Desires him in ways that have nothing to do with conscious choice.
And I don't understand. Can't understand.
But I know, with sudden terrible certainty, that whatever Yasar's presence awakens in me is dangerous.
More dangerous, perhaps, than the war brewing at our borders or the grief eating me from within.
Because it feels like hope.
And hope, I've learned, is the cruelest lie of all.
CHAPTER 7
BROTHERS IN ARMS
KAAN
Emir and his team of scouts returned three days ago from the Forgotten Grove with nothing but failure and frustration. A week of searching—just as Nesilhan demanded—and all they found were signs of violent struggle, fairy blood on ancient trees, and containment spells even Emir couldn't break. The real Banu remains missing, likely imprisoned or worse, while that shapeshifter's deception continues to haunt us all.
Nesilhan barely spoke when they delivered the news. Just nodded once, her golden eyes going distant and cold, before retreating to the training grounds where she's been pushing herself past safe limits ever since.
And now, as if we don't have enough problems, Yasar has decided to make himself useful.
I'm going to murder my cousin.
