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Not across an ocean, not somewhere starting a new life or fighting his way back to his family. He is here, in this castle, breathing the same air, and the knowledge of it has rearranged everything inside me. After years of Arlo’s gentle patience and unwavering protection, I’m lying in another man’s bed, leaning into his touch when I should be fighting it. It would be easier if I could lay all of this at Kylian’s feet and hate him for it, but that is not the truth, and the truth is what haunts me.

I did not only endure his hands; I enjoyed them. I made sounds I have never made for anyone, and some part of me went looking for his mouth in the dark before I remembered to be afraid.

Kylian has taken nothing from me, and the shame of what I willingly gave makes me want to pull the covers over my head and never surface.

I once imagined a life with Arlo. Nothing grand, but something I quietly hoped for. A place we shared. Food we earned with our own hands. Sable and Angie safe and close. His quiet laugh in the mornings. His calloused fingers laced through mine.

It was the simple certainty of being chosen by someone who felt like home.

But in every version of the life I imagine with him, I have to keep my head down, constantly glancing over my shoulder, hiding my magic to keep us safe, baring his children when no part of me wants to be someone’s mother.

Arlo loves the version of me that I let him see—the ordinary, scared girl who was never brave enough to take what she wanted or show the world what she could do. He loves me the way you cherish a family heirloom, like something you keep behind glass so the world cannot break it. He never once asked what I might become if I stopped being afraid. He only ever promised to keep me safe from it.

I loved him for that. I still do.

But safe and small keep people in cages, and part of me has started to wonder whether being kept is the same thing as being loved.

The washroom door opens, and Kylian emerges with damp hair clinging to his temples, water still glistening on his chest. He pulls a fresh shirt over his head, and his gaze finds me on the bed. I can feel the question in his expression, the pull, the wanting. But whatever he reads on my face keeps him where he is.

He doesn’t touch me again, nor does he speak.

He simply crosses the room, and the door opens and closes behind him. The lock turns. The sound is soft, but I definitely hear it.

I should be angry he locked me in; instead, I just lie here, thinking about Sable and whether she’s warm tonight. Whether anyone has been kind to her. Whether her cough has worsened or if by some miracle she’s getting better.

I worry about Arlo, somewhere below me, and whether the infirmary treated his wounds or if he fought them the way he fought the guards. Whether he’s lying on stone right now staring at a ceiling, the same way I am, thinking about the girl on the balcony who stood beside a king and didn’t run to him.

My thoughts move to Kylian, somewhere in this castle, alone and rejected by the only person whose blood can sustain him.

I have truly messed everything up.

CHAPTER 36

• King Kylian •

I STAND BY the door for three heartbeats longer than I should, my hand still resting on the handle.

Slow, careful breaths that tell me she is listening for the sound of my retreat.

So I give it to her. I move down the corridor because if I don’t move away from that room, I will turn around and do something foolish. Something desperate. Her rejection still hurts. The small but devastating tilt of her chin that redirected my lips from hers to empty space. I play it over and over again in my mind, the memory burning hotter than any sunlight I have ever been foolish enough to step into.

She turned away from me.

I have been stabbed, starved, cursed, and betrayed by blood and crown. None of it, not a single wound in my centuries of existence, has ever been as painful as that small movement.

I round the corner where the corridor meets the main stairwell, and I find Eagan exactly where I expect him, leaning against the wall with his arms folded and his expression carefully blank. He reads my face the way he reads everything, quickly and without comment.

“She’s settled?”

“She’s in her room,” I answer. “She wants nothing to do with me tonight.”

Eagan says nothing, which is the correct response because there is nothing to say. He watches me calmly.

“She hates me,” I state.

His expression remains neutral. No pity, just that patient, assessing calm that has kept me sane over the years.

“She doesn’t hate you,” he says eventually. “She’s far from everything she knows and misses her sister. Hate requires certainty in what one feels, and that girl is anything but certain.”