E is the king I never drew, the one ready to bleed with color and return to the living.
He embodies every single one of my silly teenage fantasies—my secret longings. And I’ll get crushed when he remembers who he is. Because if Nick is without a doubt powerful and stubborn enough to fight his way to a crown, I’ve got nothing of a queen in me. Nothing regal. Nothing chosen.
I should have known he had some mystic pull over me—some treacherous enchantment humming beneath every word, every grin I couldn’t see but somehow felt. I should have guessed that he carried a crown from the vividness of his voice alone.
I’ve got no business lusting for a Fae prince. I’m just a mortal girl with too many anxieties and not enough spine.
Fuck me… An actual Fae prince.
Fae royals living in lanterns have a past—and past lovers.
The blood in my ears rings with a crystal-clear pitch. Faint dotted lines swirl toward other names on the tree, forming branches of their own. His name is threaded, irrevocably, into another life. Another woman.
My jaw locks hard enough to hurt.
Ezra Hermes Lightbringer — Willow Hathor Summers
Elio Hades Lightbringer — Lorisha Pari Singh
Smoldering embers of envy rake through my gut.
I don’t know if they are even alive, but the fact that they existed at all irks me.
What am I supposed to do with that?
What am I supposed to be next to them?
I couldn’t possibly be his queen, but I don’t want to be his mistress.
Nick checks his pinging phone and runs down the ladder. “I have to make a call. Let’s find that spindle.”
I nod, the heat of E hovering closer somehow making me feel colder.
I wrap my arms around my frame. “You’re married.”
And that—more than any crown, any name, any ancient power—is the part that terrifies me the most.
“Marriage is dissolved in death. If I were even one of those two men,” E says softly.
I’m right about him being a prince of the Sun Court. I feel it in my bones. “Don’t you want to know who you were? Which of these two names belongs to you?”
And who you belong to?I almost add.
“Only if it gets me you. Otherwise, I couldn’t care less.”
“What are your instincts telling you? Are you Elio, or Ezra? Does one of those two names ring a bell?”
“To be honest, both names make me sick to my stomach.”
A line of fire snakes around my throat and slithers down the valley between my breasts, my cotton shirt catching fire. “Willow or Lori, then?”
Before I can spiral further out of control, E cuts me off. “Let me stay just E, for now. Until we know more, I won’t let you use this family tree as a shield. Who knows who those men and women are, or if they’re still even alive? They’re meaningless.”
I understand what he’s asking.
He doesn’t want to acknowledge any hypothesis that could push us apart. I know it’s foolish to agree, that I should demand answers, distance, and restraint.
Instead, I nod. “Alright.”
