“It wasn’t me,” she said, her voice gaining conviction. “She said she interfered with his plans and was sorry she left me. It was never me. He lied to me.” She pressed her fist against her sternum, the disc still in her hand. “It was never true.”
Thane’s arms tightened around her. His jaw was working. Thane, who processed things through his body before he got to words, was holding her to give her his strength.
I sat on the floor.
Not a strategic decision. My legs could no longer hold me with the revelation that our suspicions were true. I sat on the stone floor of a room her mother had built with enough love to leave a piece of herself in it. I looked at Aveline’s face and something clicked into place. The piece that I had begun accepting into my soul during my conversation with Thane was now finding a permanent place in me.
She wiped her face with the back of her hand, the gesture practical and unselfconscious, and she looked raw and real and more fully herself than I had seen her since we arrived.
I reached out and took her hand.
Not the disc hand. The other one. She looked at me, and I held her gaze and let her see whatever was on my face without artifice.
“She protected you,” I said. “From the beginning. This whole tower has been protecting you.”
“I know.” Her fingers pressed against mine. “And now I have to—” She stopped. Something crossed her face, a flash ofphysical response she tried to stay ahead of and didn’t quite manage.
I noticed it. The faint sheen at her temple, the color in her throat above her shift that hadn’t been there when we’d come downstairs. Her scent in the room had changed in the past few minutes, incrementally, the warm sweetness of it threading through the smell of old stone and resolved spell-work. My attention had been cataloging it without my permission since we’d walked through the door.
She stood up.
Not gradually. She pushed herself to her feet clumsily, using Thane’s body as a lever. Thane steadied her, standing once she did, his hand at her arm. She let him, but she didn’t lean. She stood with her spine straight and her chin level with the disc in her fist. She looked like the daughter of a woman who had built a tower out of love and died to keep a promise. She looked like a queen.
“He cannot be allowed to rule any longer,” she said.
Not a question. Not looking for our agreement. A statement of fact.
I stood and met her gaze evenly.
“No,” I agreed. “He can’t.”
“We have to stop him.” She looked between us. “Not just protect me. Not just to win a battle. End it. Whatever it takes.” Her voice rang out in the small room, firm and resolute. “He doesn’t get to do this to anyone else.”
Thane took her hand. “You have our support, Aveline.”
She took a deep breath and nodded. Every inch the queen.
Then she doubled over.
One hand at the shelf for balance, the other pressed flat against her abdomen, her breath coming out in a rush. The scent in the room spiked immediately, sweet and sharp, and Thanejerked in response, his breathing hitched, his hand already moving toward her.
She straightened. Slowly.
Looked at us both with an expression that was equal parts exhausted and resigned. “I think my heat is starting.”
Chapter Sixteen
AVELINE
The heat moved through me in a wave that started low and spread outward, deeper and stronger than the others. It was different, more powerful, more all-encompassing, and I knew this was not a spike. Not the frantic, edge-of-panic surges of the past two days. This was the real thing, deeper and more deliberate, my body finally committing to what it had been building toward since Malric and Thane walked through the tower wall.
I looked up.
Thane’s gaze was intent on me, the way it always was when he thought I needed steadying—direct, warm, tracking every movement I made with focused attention. But underneath the concern was burning heat, plain and unhidden, and when my gaze met his, he didn’t look away or soften it. He let me see it. All of it. Like he had decided I deserved to know exactly how he felt about me, with no shields.
Malric was different. He stood completely still, but I knew that didn’t mean he was quiet. His mind moved too fast behind the composed exterior, planning and strategizing, things he didn’t share with anyone. But his eyes hadn’t moved from my face since I’d looked up, and there was nothing strategic in themright now. The assessment was gone. What was there instead was something stripped of its usual coolness, his distance. Instead, he was fully present, looking at me as if I were the center of his world, not a pawn in his game against my father.
I had spent my entire life being looked at as a problem.
