“We don't know that.” My voice is sandpaper, rough and honest.
I won't lie to him. We've had enough lies.
“I do.” He pulls back and wipes his face with trembling fingers that leave red streaks across his cheekbones.
His eyes meet mine, red-rimmed and desperate, pupils blown wide with exhaustion. “Brylee, I need to tell you. The whole story. You deserve to know why—why I did what I did.”
“You don't have to—” I start, but he cuts me off with a shake of his head that looks painful, like it costs him something.
“I do.” He grips my hand, his fingers ice-cold, trembling like leaves in a storm. “When I first learned Teddie was sick, when the doctors said there was nothing they could do, I was desperate. So I went to my brother. Sam.”
He swallows hard, Adam's apple bobbing. “Sam said he knew people. Said he could get the medicine. Said he could help. I didn't ask questions. I just wanted Teddie to live. I would have sold my soul. I would have soldyours, at least at first, before you became more than just ‘Teddie’s sister’ to me.” His voice cracks on the admission, shame dripping from every word. “And I did. God, I did.”
He takes a shuddering breath, turning fully in the chair to stare at me. The anguish in his eyes is a punch to the gut, knocking the wind out of me.
“It was… It was my idea to have him as your roommate at Eros. Not because I thought he would betray you. Never that. But because I knew you would need someone to look after you. I'm good at technology. You know that. I had already changed Sam's last name to grant him entrance a year prior.”
A self-deprecating smirk tugs at his lips, there and gone, a ghost of the man he used to be. “I pretended he was the son of a rich noble and manipulated a few school websites, writing up archived posts about Sam’s achievements. That's the only way those pretentious bastards would allow a beta in the academy. Of course, that guy I chose doesn’t actually have a son, but no one knows that. He keeps to himself and lives on the other side of the country.
“I thought…” He takes a stilted breath. “I thought Sam would protect you. Have your back.”
Phantom claws wrap around my lungs. Every breath scrapes against my rib cage, sharp and insufficient.
“Are you saying he knew? Sam, I mean. He knew?” I whisper, blinking away the barrage of tears that threatens to blind me.
I'm belatedly aware of Ridge taking a step forward in my periphery, drawn to my misery like a compass needle to north, but I wordlessly shake my head.
This is between me and Caran.
“That you were a girl? That you were Princess Brylee?” Caran scrubs at the blue-black skin beneath his eyes, evidence of his lack of sleep, of his suffering. “Yeah. He knew.”
He takes another shuddering breath, and when he speaks again, his voice is barely audible, a confession whispered into the void. “I didn't know he was planning to sell you to the Noths. I swear to God, Brylee, I didn't know. I never would've agreed to that. Not… Not even for Teddie. Not when I know losing you would destroy him. Destroy both of us.”
The pieces click together with terrible clarity, a puzzle I never wanted to solve. Caran's betrayal wasn't malicious. It wasn't power hungry or greedy. It was love, twisted and desperate and catastrophic, the same love that has him sitting in this waiting room now, wasting away while his mate fights for his life. He broke the world to save one person, and now he's watching that world crumble anyway.
I look toward the closed doors of the ICU, where machines beep in mechanical rhythm and my brother's chest rises and falls with mechanical assistance. I think of my parents in the ground, finally agreeing on something—the permanence of silence. Of peace that might be real or might be a lie wearing diplomacy'smask. Of cures that don't cure and brothers who might not wake up and traitors who loved too hard.
I squeeze Caran's hand, feeling the bones beneath his skin, fragile and human and breakable.
And we sit together in our shared agony, waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the clock to strike midnight, for the miracle that might never come—two people bound by the boy sleeping down the hall, holding on to hope by our fingernails, bleeding but refusing to let go.
51
BRYLEE
I tastethe salt of my own tears before they even fall—brine and grief and something dangerously close to joy, all crystallizing on my tongue like the residue of an ocean I’ve been drowning in for months.
Blinking hard, I press the heel of my palm against my sternum, trying to physically hold myself together because if I don't, I might dissolve into the marble beneath this ridiculous gilt chair. The stone is cold even through layers of silk and petticoats, unforgiving as the reality of today.
“Deep breath, Princess.” Luka’s hand finds my knee, his thumb tracing maddeningly slow circles through the champagne-colored silk of my gown. His touch is warm, steady, an anchor in a sea that’s been storming for years on end. “You’re turning blue.”
“I don’t think I’m technically a princess,” I whisper back, though my throat feels like it's been lined with broken glass. “Not anymore. Or am I? How does this work? Do I get demoted? Is there paperwork?”
“You're whatever you want to be,” Kylian says from behind me, his fingers briefly brushing the nape of my neck—cool and steady and vexingly confident. I can hear the smirk in his voice, the one that’s gotten him out of—and into—trouble since we met. “Princess. Queen of my particular universe. Obsession. Sexy minx in a very expensive dress. The options are endless.”
“Stop flirting during a coronation,” Ridge mutters from Luka’s other side, though there’s no real bite to it.
His head is on a constant swivel, searching for threats despite the fact he’ssupposedto be off-duty.
