I shake my head. “That’s why I love you, Alex.”And why you’re definitely not coming along.
He grimaces. “Shut up. Don’t get all sentimental on me now.”
I blow him a kiss, and he rolls his eyes before dropping back into his seat and knocking back the remainder of his drink.
“For real though, I’ve missed spending time with you, Ki,” he says sincerely. “You’ve been off vigilante-ing and I’ve had to entertain all the ladies on my own.”
“You poor sod.” I gasp. “However have you survived it?”
He frowns. “I can’t keep up, that’s for sure.”
I laugh at him and finish off my own drink. “I’ll join you one of these nights, I promise.”
“You better,” he insists. “Now, tell me, what else have you been up to?”
My heartbeat quickens at the sudden flash of green eyes that takes up my thoughts, and while my instinct is to stay quiet and keep everything else to myself, I fight against it, trying to let Alex in. “Well, I might have paid Lord Astoria’s home a visit the last two nights.”
“Whatever for?” Alex frowns. “According to rumors, he doesn’t have much worth stealing.”
“True as that may be, my research led me to him.”
“Research on what?” he asks.
“Kyros, the lost sun god.”
“Kyros, the lost sun god?”
“Are you just going to repeat everything I say?” I sigh in exasperation, looking up at the ceiling.
“Apologies, my prince. I may have had too much of your fine liquor while waiting for you in the dark.”
I snort. “Clearly.”
“What kind of research has you looking into the lost sun god?”
I blow out a breath. “The highly treasonous kind.”
“More treasonous than your vigilante-ing?”
“You know that’s not even a word, right?”
He grins. “So what? I like it.”
“You idiot.”
He snickers.
“I’ve been chasing stories of him—of Kyros. Trying to figure out the reason for his unexpected appearance and then disappearance a few decades ago.”
“Sounds like you have a death wish with your vigilante-ing and ‘treasonous’ research.” He snorts. “You know I’m not devout. Luna, Galyna, Veritius . . . they are as good as missing too with how they abandoned our realm centuries ago. We’re on our own here.”
“Fair, but I believe something else is amiss,” I say, rising and walking to my desk. “If Kyros were merely in Celestia with the other gods, our realm wouldn’t have faced all the famine and lack of sunlight for the past few decades. He was here, and then he disappeared, sending our realm into chaos that’s only getting worse.”
“That might be true, but even if you prove the correlation, what do you think you can do about it?” Alex asks.
I flip through some of my notes. Despite all his questions, it feels freeing to have someone to talk about this with. Maybe he’ll see something I missed. “I have to find him or find out what happened to him. Resources are getting thinner. One wouldn’t know at the palace with our overabundance of stores, but even with the famine, the king steals portions of crops from all the surrounding farms. Despite the lack, he hasn’t lowered the tithe. He continues to demand his share, even though our people are dying. If I weren’t ‘vigilante-ing,’ as you put it, my people wouldn’t make it through the coming season.”
“I respect that, but do you realize how much pressure you’re putting on yourself to solve an entire realm’s problem?”
