They stood in front of a delicately carved wooden door. The hall on either side of the door seemed to stretch. He remembered running down this very hall with Kassily and Kalden—the Crown Prince’s younger siblings—the children screeching with delight at his antics.
He didn’t remember how to be the Toran who made them smile, the one who could smile himself.
Quint gestured to the door. “The King wants to see you. Now.”
Everything in him screeched to a halt. The King.
He’d been waiting months for this moment, ever since his failure in Aeos had come to light. Still, as Quint swung open the door to the King’s study, pity in his eyes, Toran couldn’t help but feel like he was a piece of bait about to be strung out.
He shook his head. He’d already been caught. All that was left was for him to be skewered.
The King had always been good to him—had taken Toran in and treated him as one of his own after he’d lost his mother. But even the King was giving up on him. Took him long enough.
Let it happen, he thought.Let the King strip me of my titles. It was no less than he deserved. At least then he’d be free to sleep and drink until his heart was well and truly drowned.
Toran stepped inside, halting in the center of the room. It was cold, as if someone had left a window open, and empty.
He stood in the middle of the circular study, with its stained glass and ornate bookcases and many portraits. And emptiness.
Quint shut the door, locking Toran in. A mistake.
Quint had left him in an empty room with a liquor cabinet taller than the bookshelves. One stocked full of all the alcohol Toran could ever want.
Bottles of Lush wine and Kehrn whiskey and Kave rum. The best ofthe best. And, of course, set right in the middle, a large bottle of Keslo liquor. If he was getting the boot, he might as well take a parting gift.
He made for the desk. He felt the eyes of a stained-glass image—a roaring lion, sigil of House Alakar—on him as he rifled through the desk drawers in search of something to use as a lock pick.
Someone had stashed a letter opener in the third drawer. Not ideal. Still, he stumbled over to the rows of liquor, his dry mouth cracking at the sight behind the glass. Sliding the tip of the letter opener into the small keyhole, he wiggled the end.
Nothing happened.
He wiggled it some more. Tilted the letter opener this way and that. Nothing.
All he wanted was the alcohol behind the glass. And the letter opener just wasn’t—he grunted as he twisted the thin bit of silver again—doing the trick.
A lock clicked and, for the briefest second, he thought he’d succeeded. But then voices carried through the study door. The King had arrived.
He raced back to the desk, flinging open the drawer and tossing the letter opener inside. The handle moved just as he shoved the drawer shut with a knee and threw himself down in the King’s chair. He leaned his head back and propped his feet on the polished desk.
The King strode in, muttering something that sounded an awful lot like “that boy.”
Toran couldn’t help his grin. There was only one person King Harkett ever referred to as “that boy.” Kohen—his firstborn son.
The Crown Prince had always been everything you’d expect a prince to be. Handsome, noble, arrogant. Even charming and downright irresistible—despite his flash of unnaturally white hair, courtesy of the Witch. It had been the Witch using her magic on his son, however small, that fueled the King’s desire to hunt her down. And it was the Prince’s white hair that people still whispered about behind his back all these years later.
Tainted by magic.
Witchmarked.
Having spent a majority of his life at the Prince’s back, Toran had heard it all. But his favorite had always been “that boy.” Mostly because he, like the King, never knew what to do with Kohen.
Ever since Toran first arrived in the castle, he and Kohen had been pitted against each other—in their studies, during their training, even at meals they were seated opposite one another, forced to stare down the other as they cleaned their plates. Toran knew Kohen’s love for him was fleeting at best, especially since the Prince’s own father tended to favor Toran. At least, the King used to, back when Toran was Orlonea’s “golden boy,” as Kohen so often referred to him.
King Harkett stopped before his desk. The swirling gray clouds in his eyes—eyes he’d bestowed upon all his children—swept over Toran, pausing briefly on his propped feet. But the King said nothing. Simply seated himself in a chair opposite him.
Toran closed his eyes against a hammering in his head. He could use a tonic. Or another drink. “Let’s get this over with.”
The King folded his hands over the front of his coat, eyes studying Toran. “You’re hungover.”
