Then the mask slid back into place, and he was moving. He activated the library’s wards with a gesture, checked the corridor, and was gone.
Fergal stood alone in the library. The fire crackled. The Codex waited on the table. Outside, he could hear the compound reacting to its new reality—boots on stone, voices raised in alarm, phones beeping with the steps of the lockdown protocol being executed.
He looked at the cups of tea and coffee on the table. His own mug, exiled to the far corner. Gregor’s tea, still steaming, abandoned for the second time in their history. Fergal walked over and picked up Gregor’s cup. He held it in both hands, the way he had that first night in the library when Gregor had fled and left his tea behind.
He was the king now. Twenty-six years old in human terms, with a law degree and a dead father and a clan full of people who were about to learn that the world as they knew it had ended. He had no experience, no known allies beyond Gregor, and at least two enemy operatives embedded in his inner circle.
Fergal set down the teacup. He closed the Codex with a soft, deliberate thud. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand—one quick, fierce motion—and straightened his spine.
Then he sat in his chair and waited for Gregor to come back because that was the one thing in this new, terrifying world he was absolutely certain of.
Gregor would come back.
CHAPTER TEN
The compound was as secure as Gregor could make it, which meant it was as secure as anyone on earth could make it, and it still didn’t feel like enough.
He stood outside Fergal’s quarters—the prince’s quarters, not the king’s, because Fergal had refused to move into his father’s rooms with a quiet “not tonight” that had shut down the suggestion entirely—and ran through his mental checklist one final time. Perimeter wards reinforced and verified. Every guard on double shift, with his own hand-selected men covering the royal wing. All access points locked and warded.
Duncan and Donovan had been located, documented, and were under discreet surveillance by the two guards Gregor trusted most. The crime scene was sealed. Gregor’s preliminary examination was complete, every detail committed to memory before he’d allowed anyone else near it.
The crossbow bolts had been custom-made. Short-range, heavy-tipped, designed to punch through dragon-scale armor at close distance. Whoever had fired them had known exactly where Lorcan and Brian would land after their evening flight, had positioned themselves within fifty yards of the landing site,and had executed both kills within seconds of each other. Two shooters, minimum. Professionals.
And the landing site—that was the detail that kept circling in Gregor’s mind like a vulture over a carcass. The king’s flight schedule wasn’t public knowledge. Lorcan deliberately varied his routes, a security measure Gregor himself had recommended years ago. But the landing site was always the same—the north clearing, shielded from the compound’s main sightlines by a stand of old-growth spruce.
Only a handful of people knew about that clearing. Gregor. Ruben. The king’s personal guards.
And his advisors.
He’d shared his preliminary findings with Fergal in clipped, clinical terms while walking with him to view his father’s body, which had been brought over from the crime scene to prepare for the viewing and last rituals. Gregor hadn’t softened the news. Fergal deserved the truth, and more importantly, Fergal needed the truth to survive what was coming. The new king couldn’t afford the luxury of ignorance, not with enemies potentially sitting in his own council chamber.
Fergal had listened without interrupting, his face bloodless, his spine rigid. He’d looked at his father’s body for exactly twelve seconds, then turned and walked out of the room with a steadiness that would’ve fooled anyone who didn’t know him.
It didn’t fool Gregor. He’d seen the way Fergal’s hands had trembled at his sides. The way his throat had worked around a swallow that didn’t quite succeed. The way his eyes had gone glassy and distant for the span of a single heartbeat before the steel came back down.
He’d been holding it together all day. Sixteen hours of being king, of making decisions, issuing orders, receiving condolences from clan members who’d looked at him with expressionsranging from genuine grief to barely concealed calculation. He hadn’t cracked once. Not in public.
Gregor knocked on the door. It felt absurd since he’d let himself into this room a thousand times over the years to wake Fergal for early lessons, to check on him during illness, or to reinforce wards that didn’t need reinforcing because Gregor checked them compulsively. But everything was different now. The rules that had governed their interactions—tutor and student, guard and prince, the careful architecture of professional distance—had been incinerated along with the world that created them.
“It’s open.”
Fergal’s voice was hoarse. Gregor entered and closed the door behind him, engaging the lock and activating the ward in a single practiced motion.
The room was dim. A single lamp burned on the nightstand, casting a pool of warm light that didn’t reach the corners. Fergal sat on the edge of his bed, still in the clothes he’d worn that morning—the green sweater, the dark trousers, boots still on. He hadn’t changed. Hadn’t showered. On the desk, an untouched tray of food sat beside a glass of water that looked like it hadn’t been touched either.
He was holding something in his hands. Gregor stepped closer and recognized it—a small leather journal, soft with age, its cover embossed with a pattern of interlocking Celtic knots. Queen Ciara’s journal. Fergal had kept it in his nightstand since his mother’s death, and Gregor knew he read it on the nights when the compound felt too cold and too quiet and too empty.
Fergal looked up, and the expression on his face nearly buckled Gregor’s knees.
The tight control was still in place, the jaw clenched, the red-rimmed eyes dry through sheer force of will. But the effort of not crying was written across every line of his face with a clarity thatwas worse than tears. He looked exhausted. He looked young. He looked like the boy Gregor had pulled from the frozen lake, small and shaking and in desperate need of someone to hold him.
Gregor opened his mouth to deliver his security update on the perimeter status, guard rotations, and the surveillance on Duncan and Donovan. The words were lined up and ready, professional and precise, the same briefing he’d deliver to any commanding officer. What came out was, “Have you eaten?”
Fergal shook his head.
“You need to eat.”
“I know.” He didn’t move toward the tray.
