Gregor froze, his whole body stiffening, and his expression flickered for a moment before he went on full lockdown, mask in place and walls pulled up so high they might as well have been made of diamonds. “Why would you ask that? You know your brother was young when he died.”
“What does age have to do with anything?” Fergal refused to back down, meeting Gregor’s eyes dead on. “I know he wasn’t a good man.”
“I don’t want to talk about this. It’s not relevant to our discussion.”
Maybe not, but it was relevant to Fergal. What might’ve been a hunch when he’d spontaneously asked, now became something much stronger, a deep undercurrent that something was off there. Very, very off. Why did Gregor not want to talk about Peter?
But he knew better than to push, which would only reinforce those walls. He’d have to find out what Gregor was hiding another way. “You’re right. It’s not. Let’s circle back to the wolves and the True Alpha. What else do you know about that?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Fergal was running on fumes, and he didn’t even know it.
Gregor had been watching the signs accumulate for days now—the tremor in Fergal’s hands when he signed documents, so slight that no one else would notice but as glaring as a signal flare to Gregor. The dark circles beneath his eyes that became more pronounced each day. The meals that arrived and sat untouched until Gregor physically moved the plate in front of him and waited until he ate. The coffee that went cold because Fergal poured it, set it down, and forgot it existed within thirty seconds.
And the sleep. That was the worst of it. Fergal collapsed into unconsciousness the moment his head touched the pillow—his body demanding what his mind refused to give—but at three in the morning, sometimes two, sometimes four, his breathing would change. The deep, even rhythm of sleep would fracture into something shallower, quicker, and Gregor would lie in the dark listening to the man beside him think.
Gregor couldn’t fix any of the things Fergal was facing—a murdered father, a stolen crown, enemies embedded in the walls, dark magic gathering around them, and a Dragon Council ten days away that would determine whether a young kingsurvived his first year on the throne. But he could do something else.
He could help him find release.
He found Fergal in the study—where else?—at half past nine, at the desk he’d occupied since seven that morning. The remnants of a dinner sat on a tray on the side table, and Gregor noted with satisfaction that the plate that had held mac and cheese was mostly empty. He’d started having the kitchen prepare Fergal’s favorites. The simple comfort foods that Fergal was most likely to actually consume.
“Time to stop,” Gregor said from the doorway.
Fergal didn’t look up. “I need to finish the Council seating arrangements.”
“The seating arrangements can wait until morning.”
“And the ward specifications for the Council site need to be?—”
“Morning.”
“And I need to?—”
Gregor crossed the room, placed his hand flat on the document Fergal was reading, and slid it away from him. Fergal’s pen continued moving for a half-second, drawing a line across the empty desk before his brain caught up with the absence of paper.
He looked up. His eyes were bloodshot, the sharp brown dulled by exhaustion, and the reading glasses he still pretended to hate were sitting crookedly on his nose. He looked young and tired and stubborn, and something behind Gregor’s sternum ached with a fierceness that still caught him off guard after all these weeks.
“What you need is a shower, a cup of tea, and eight hours of sleep. In that order. What you want is to keep working until your body gives out because working means you don’t have to thinkabout anything except the next document, and thinking is the thing you’re avoiding.”
Fergal opened his mouth. Closed it. Took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands—the gesture so achingly familiar that Gregor could have sketched it from memory.
“I hate it when you do that,” Fergal muttered.
“Do what?”
“See right through me. It’s deeply inconvenient.”
“Then stop being transparent.” Gregor picked up the cold coffee mug and the document stack and moved both to the far side of the desk, out of Fergal’s reach. “Shower. Tea. Bed. That’s an order.”
“You can’t give me orders. I’m the king.”
“And yet.” Gregor held the study door open and waited.
Fergal glared at him for three full seconds—a personal record—then pushed back from the desk with the exaggerated reluctance of a man who wanted it known that he was complying under protest. He stood, swayed almost imperceptibly, and Gregor’s hand was on his arm before the sway had fully registered.
“I’m fine,” Fergal said.
