Nik, for Nikalos.
I’d kissed a gods-damned Lys’Careth.
Eleven
The man I’d fought, searched, and danced with—the man who’d kissed me—was the new Western Prince. A Lys’Careth. Son of the Emperor Eternal.
Should I have seen that? Yue had told him to stay in the carriage instead of helping the fight. In the caravanserai, Savaadh—a prince among his people—treated him as an equal. Galen was overprotective, apparently because Nik wasn’t just his colleague in arms, but his responsibility.
I was confused and furious and hurt, and I could feel Wren bristling beside me like a startled snake, ready to strike.
Nik—no, theprince—hadn’t taken his eyes off me. “You might as well say something, Fox, before your head bursts into flames.”
“We trusted you. We saved you.” That was all I could manage.
“I know.” He glanced at Luna. “As did you. I owe you a debt of gratitude. Thank you for intervening.”
Luna nodded, but her expression was tight.
“This is Luna,” I said. “You took him into the Aetheric?”
She nodded, then gave me a long last look and disappeared. She’d find us later, when we had more privacy.
“You have unusual friends,” the prince said.
“So we’ve discovered,” Wren said, her voice tight.
The prince met her gaze straight on. “Say what you want to say, Wren.”
“Fuck you, Your Highness.” Her thin smile was sharp, deadly as a blade. “There’s more to say, but I don’t want to be arrested.”
I considered how many inappropriate things I’d said—including telling the prince to hush.
He must have seen that in my face. “You both get a pass for anything said before the…revelation. No one’s going to arrest you.”
Galen sighed with disappointment.
“Your identity explains the bandit attack,” Wren said darkly.
“They wouldn’t have known who he was,” Galen said.
She rolled her eyes. “They may have learned the prince was sending people to Vhrania to investigate.”
“A lot of trouble to send bandits all that way to stop us from bringing back information. Maybe someone saw through my disguise, or we just got unlucky and they took a chance.”
“They were thieves,” I said.
“Thieves?” Galen asked. “Of what?”
“We don’t have anything of value,” the prince said. “Other than the horses, which they didn’t take.”
“They didn’t want coin. One of the bandits was searching the carriage for something specific.” I looked at the prince. “Maybe something they wanted to take back.”
“Take back…” the prince murmured, and then his eyes went dark with understanding. “The seal we found on the assassin in the woods. Or the drawing we found in the forge.”
I nodded. “Maybe Tommen confessed he’d done drawings, told the practitioner where they were hidden. Maybe they need the plans to make the weapon work.”
The prince nodded. “Or they wanted to cover their tracks.”
