But light spilled into the room—and color. Those things, as much as the pure joy radiating from Catrin, got my feet moving again.
The spot where I’d taken to enjoying breakfast in the morning had been utterly transformed. The breath caught in my throat, chest tightened.The air itself had turned to perfume. Whitewashed planters, brimming with colorful blooms, now decorated every inch of the balcony’s railing. Roses of a deep crimson stood tall next to a sea of vibrant purple lavender, the contrast creating a sort of distinctive beauty that made me clutch the necklace he’d gifted me.
I’d never seen anything lovelier in my life. This was an apology, written in petals the color of desire and hope. For the first time in days, his silence didn’t feel like an absence. This felt like a release. Five long mornings of worrying about what would happen next melted away, replaced by tender feelings that were far too dangerous to entertain.
Yet maybe this was a promise of something new, of something waiting to blossom. In my heart of hearts, I wished it could be true. I visited a few of the flowers, enjoying their fragrance as I brushed my fingers along their delicate petals. It was a small gesture for a prince, but to me it was just further proof of Emrys’ true character.
Catrin, with a mischievous glint in her eyes, pulled out my usual chair and gestured for me to sit. She didn’t say another word as she started watering the plants with the pail she was still carrying.
My heart began racing with anticipation even before I sat down. With a wide smile on my face, I read
Isca,
I won’t seek your forgiveness, as I am not worthy of it. What I did was beneath the man I strive to be, and far beneath the standards of a prince.
You have offered me kindness, and I returned it with suspicion and inappropriate behavior. I allowed my emotions to control me, and that is inexcusable.
You did nothing to deserve my harsh words or my actions. Someone like you deserves only beauty in their life, not my ugliness.
I will keep my distance. My distance usually becomes silence, so I wanted these words to remain: I am sorry. Not just for what I did, but for how much it revealed.
— Emrys
At lunch that afternoon, I tucked a sprig of lavender into my hair, unable to resist his apology. He’d seen it but hadn’t softened. That was fine. I could give him time—especially since he’d shared the smallest glimpse into his heart with me so freely.
That evening, the castle felt unusually still. I joined the blooms on my balcony as they caught the moonlight like tiny beacons, wishing I didn’t have to be alone amidst such beauty.
But when dawn broke again, Emrys was simply…gone.
Now it had been three days since he’d vanished without a word. Whenever I felt a pulse of shame or sorrow drift off a passing servant or guard, my mind flashed to a pair of blue eyes that held more of those emotions than I’d thought possible.
I’d read his letter so many times I could recite it from memory. I kept getting stuck on those words “how much it revealed.” What, exactly, had it revealed?
I repeatedly contemplated destroying it in my frustration and confusion. Instead, I tucked it into my small trunk with Tegil’s osprey for safekeeping so I could read it again like a foolish teenage girl—as if the tenth reading might unearth answers the first nine had refused to give. And instead of granting me comfort, his words plagued me. Every glimpse I’d had of his inner self revealed a soul in constant, screaming agony. Perhaps that had been the moment the balance finally tipped, and he could no longer hold back the thing inside him.
I’d known, that night, that I was looking at a predator, not the man who’d patiently attended to a widow’s troubles after the audience, or the man who ran from me, again and again, to protect me from what lived inside him. I’d been interacting with his curse, his private hell of magicfar too powerful for one body to contain. And now that he was gone, I couldn’t decide which terrified me more—that he’d lost to his beast or that he’d run to save me from it.
And, for some reason, his magicwantedme. I couldn’t tell if the motivation behind its actions was lust, a bid for control, or a strategic push to drive me away. I didn’t even know if Emrys shared in its desire.
I just knew that my body had lit up like one of the grand candelabras in the great hall, blazing with such an intense, breathless desire that it was overwhelming every time I got near enough to touch him.
And chancellor Maeron’s phantom quill scraped at the back of my mind, tallying my hesitation as failures. My magic was meant to soothe him, guide him. Yet here I was, no closer to helping them choose a king, and no closer to fulfilling the Assembly’s…other requirement.
Maeron’s last letter had been a masterpiece of veiled threats, his elegant purple seal disguising the vulgar contents within. Every line was a balance sheet of my successes and failures.
He’d reminded me that my purpose here wasn’t to untangle Emrys’s soul, but to keep him calm enough to wear a crown or abdicate his seat. Then oh-so-subtly, he’d reminded me of my duty to return carrying a child that would undoubtedly become their weapon.
I’d burned it the second I’d finished reading.
The longer I sat with that secondary task in the back of my mind, the more I realized I couldn’t do it. I would be little more than a prisoner to the Assembly. There to suckle my babe, to act as a convenient caregiver, but never truly be a mother.
Even if it provided me and my child with a comfortable, safe life, they’d find ways to undermine my influence as a parent at every turn to further their shady machinations. I refused to have my child used the way they were using me, regardless of who the father was.
Never. I wouldneverdo that to my child. And if I could devise a solution, I would make sure they could never exploit a child in that way.
When the week ended, Emrys’s rooms remained dark, his seat at the table empty. The guards said nothing, and Nisien’s tight-lipped expression told me not to ask.
Still, I couldn’t keep walking around the castle with nothing to do. My family was still under the Assembly’s thumb, and their cruelty extended far beyond simple death. If the Assembly held my family’s lives in their hands, then my work here was the only shield I still had. And shielding them meant helping Emrys.
