Page 201

I open my mouth, only nothing comes out.

The truth is written in every line of my body, in the way I still lean into him despite everything, in the bond between us singing with confirmation I can’t ignore.

He releases my chin and steps back. The loss of contact feels like a gaping hole in my chest.

“As I thought,” he says, the words clipped.

He turns and walks toward the door.

“Kylian—” My voice breaks.

He doesn’t stop. The door slams behind him, leaving me trembling against his desk, shirt torn, tears on my face, and a truth I don’t think I can keep denying for much longer.

I don’t know how long I stand there, staring out the door he just went through. I didn’t come here to start a fight, yet somehow most of our interactions turn into one. I should leave, but I can’t seem to make myself move. The room smells of him. His dark, earthy scent fills my nose.

I should leave and go to my room, wash my face, and pretend none of this happened. But my feet won’t move toward the door. Instead, I find myself circling his desk, my fingers trailing over the polished wood, over the papers that scattered when he shoved me against it.

There is a map pinned beneath a brass paperweight. Not just any map, one with every kingdom mapped out in great detail. I look at Sangremere and see where dark lines have scribbled out the edges, marking where the water has crept closer, eating the shorelines.

Moving papers aside, I find small notations in Kylian’s elegant handwriting. Vessel dispatched to Fenrune. No sign. Xavian’s contacts at the docks on Emberfall—checked. Malachor—checked.

My breath catches.

Beneath the map, a stack of letters. Sealed, unopened returns, some bearing the wax marks of ports I’ve never heard of. I shouldn’t read them. I know I shouldn’t. But my hands are already moving, unfolding the topmost one. It’s a report from someone named Vex, dated three days ago.

My King,

All vessels searched. I’ve attached vessel logs, but no one by that name has been found.

Vex

I stare at the words, checking each vessel log that appears to have come from Fenrune Kingdom. Picking up another envelope, it’s the same. Kylian has been checking every dock, so where is she if she hasn’t turned up on any ships?

Dropping the envelope, I pick up an old, worn folder and find my trade transfer papers that Zander must have given him. It’s full of records stamped with false names and bold red crown seals. The lie I told the guard about how our parents died from illness years before, leaving us behind to fend for ourselves after guards scooped us off the blood-soaked streets.

Pages of debt transfers. One page is a court order marking the day we were given to Dahlia, noting the bounty she was paid for fostering us and the amount we then owed back to the Crown for finding us living arrangements until we both turned fourteen and were considered old enough to work. As if the work we did for Dahlia didn’t count.

The next is a receipt for the debt when Sable was sick once. The numbers swell after every doctor’s visit that Dahlia lied about—because not once did she ever get a doctor for us. My hand shakes as I see the inked signature that transferred us from Dahlia to Mr. Crawly, along with large fines I owed the Crown for compensation to Dahlia.

The final paper is the raid roster from the week Sable was taken. It lists Sable by name and age, detailing her features—her strange eyes, her blond hair, even the number of scars that litter her body. Black marker slashes beside the words: relocated—repossessed asset.

Kylian didn’t just know my secrets; he’d traced all of them.

Turning to the last page, I find the amount I owe to the Crown, alongside a much newer certificate stamped in gold ink.

I stare at it, my breath catching. Debt: paid in full.

For a moment, I can’t make sense of the words.

My eyes drag over the page again, searching for some mistake, some fine print that will tell me what I’m missing. But there is none.

The debt Dahlia and Crawly had spent years adding to—the debt that had been used to keep me bound, to remind me that I belonged to someone—is gone.

Paid completely, and beneath it is something I never thought I would see.

Royal Writ of Emancipation.

My fingers tremble as I hold it up, tracing the gold seal with the pad of my thumb.