Alanna swung her legs over the side of the bed and took the handkerchief that Keely passed her to dab at her swollen eyes and wipe her nose. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”
Keely snorted sadly. “Captain Intense? Please. You’ve already told me, many times, that he’s perfect. A mythological hero brought to life, made entirely of muscles and ethics, all the way down to his bizarrely masculine wings. Bard, why couldn’t he put us all out of our misery and flitter from time to time?”
Alanna gave a watery sniffle, hiccoughing in reluctant amusement. And then her tears started once more, a hot slide of misery down her cheeks. “Prince Ballanor accused us of being traitors. We need to see the king—”
“Oh Bard, you don’t know,” Keely interrupted softly. “Geraint died at Ravenstone. Ballanor is the king now.”
The world lurched. Holy Bard. Her palms prickled with a sudden clammy sweat and she wiped them down her legs, trying to wrap her mind around the horror. Ballanor was the king.
Geraint would have followed the law and called in the Nephilim justices. But he was dead.
What were they going to do?
Keely bit her lip for a second, her forehead wrinkled. “I don’t understand why on earth Val would bring you back here? Surely….” She let the sentence drift as she noticed how stiff and pale Alanna was. “Lanni? What did you do?”
“He asked me to run away with him,” Alanna admitted.
Keely tensed beside her, realizing the truth. “And you said no?”
“Of course. We had to come back and try to save the treaty.”
Keely’s eyes roved over her face, and Bard help her, she was too exhausted and overwhelmed to hide anything.
“And what else?” Keely asked quietly.
Alanna shifted so that she could rest her head on Keely’s shoulder. “He also started… um, at least, he tried to say….”
“That he loved you?”
“Mmm.” She didn’t want to say the words.
“And what did you do?”
“I stopped him before….”
“Oh, Lanni.” Keely pursed her lips and shrugged her shoulder, forcing Alanna to sit up on her own.
Alanna could hear the rebuke, the tension in her friend’s voice, and she knew that Keely was thinking of a boy she had loved, and lost, long ago. A boy Keely would not have hesitated to run away with. Bard. How did everything get so awful?
Alanna took her friend’s hand and squeezed it gently as she whispered through her tears, “I’m sorry.” It wasn’t enough—her sorrow—not by any stretch of the imagination. But it was all she had.
Keely squeezed back and gave her a melancholy half smile. “Me too.”
They sat together, hand in hand, on the side of the bed as Alanna’s tears slowly dried.
“What are we going to do?” Keely asked eventually.
“I don’t know,” Alanna admitted in a subdued voice. “I really don’t know.”
Chapter One
Thepresent
“They’re goingto hang your princess.”
The words reverberated through Val’s head, but they still didn’t make any sense.
They’re going to hang your princess.
