“Assassination,” Seren spits. “Why are you so fucking calm? Shouldn’t we be searching the castle? Hiding in a secret room? Doing something—anything—I don’t know what.”
Nevander steps back, calm settling into sternness. He suits this garden. Beautiful and impossible. “I did not expect Haelwen to die today, but she was unwell. I planned for her death. Beyond my plans, there are rituals and protocols older than us both. As for hiding.” Nevander gestures, hand glimmering with the suggestion of a sword hilt that never fully materializes. “You are safe to the best of my ability. That is all I can promise, but at risk of arrogance, my best is greater than most.”
Insane. This is insane. Talk of plans and protocols only leaves Seren more adrift. This realm is too complicated, too many people with all their secrets and ambitions. Seren yearned to escape his tiny village, but this world is too big for him.
“What plans did you have for me?” Seren asks.
Nevander’s stare is inescapable, his answer quiet. “You are the Prince of Summer.”
“That’s not an answer,” Seren retorts, and Nevander simply regards him.
Seren’s helplessness hardens to resistance. Resentment. Nevander dragged him here, expecting him to slot neatly into the role of fae prince. Protect Seren from augray and courtiers because he’s the prince. Teach Seren about magic and carryholds because he’s the prince. Comfort Seren and reinforce his authority because he’s the prince.
There’s no cold-sharp loathing, but Seren feels like he’s back at his family dinner table. Nothing he said or did ever changed how Edith and Alard treated him, because Seren was never their son. He was the monster forced upon them—by the fae woman who now lies dead within this tree.
Nevander may not hate Seren, but he doesn’tseehim either.
Assassination. The word slices through Seren’s pretense of being all right. And Seren refuses to play another impossible role.
“I can’t do this,” Seren says, quiet, certain. “I won’t do this. I just need to take Edith and Alard’s son back to them, and then I’ll… I’ll figure something out. But I can’t do this.”
Nevander regards him like Alard would a damaged book. “What would you do instead?”
“I don’t know!” Seren throws up his hands. “You said it yourself. My brothers were kidnapped, probably dead. Now my mother lies here, assassinated this morning!” Seren has to catch his breath, his insides shaky and cold. “I’m not stupid, and I refuse to be next.”
“You cannot return to the human realm without the changeling binding,” Nevander points out, far too reasonably. “Where in Summer would you flee?”
Seren can’t answer that. He doesn’t even know what other cities or villages exist outside the palace.
“Running will not help you,” Nevander says, “and Summer needs a ruler.”
“Does that ruler have to be me?” Seren asks helplessly. “There must be someone better suited.”
Nevander remains stone-faced. “There are few who even have sufficient magic. Your brothers are gone. Between the other high fae… now more than ever, I would not trust them.”
“I’ll take that chance. This isn’t…” Seren swallows, stuck on an uneasy half-truth. “This shouldn’t be my responsibility.”
Nevander looks away. Silence hardens like a second coat of armor. Then he says, “You want to return Tansy to Wymond. He will refuse. He already schemes to remain past his welcome.”
The change of subject catches Seren off-balance. “I’ll make him return. He has to. They miss him.”
“Make him?” Nevander asks, his gaze returning like a lash of sunlight. “By whose hand?”
Seren flinches back.
He had assumed Nevander would help. With Tansy, with leaving court, with everything. Because Nevander has guided him through every step of this journey. Nevander wants Seren to be king—but if Seren could just persuade him—
Nevander’s words are painfully precise. “Before your coronation, I will not return Tansy by force. For better or for worse, I am not sworn to obey you.”
Seren’s helplessness boils to frustration. “Whatareyou sworn to?”
Pain gasps through him. A breath of fire, a heartbeat of thorns.
It’s gone before Seren even staggers backwards, trembling with subsiding magic. The emotion was too fleeting to define, and the shock is Seren’s own.
Nevander, for one moment, lost control.
Now Nevander approaches, until his presence obscures the weeping tree. He touches the center of Seren’s chest. “Should you wish it, you shall have my obedience when the Summer Crown sits upon your head. Until that moment, you do not command me.”
