My mother’s on me before I’m fully standing. She gets right up in my face, her eyes wet and furious, and shoves me hard in the chest. “Put it back. You put it backright now.Give it back to him.”
“I can’t, Ma.” I don’t lift a hand against her. I take it. “It doesn’t work that way. It has to come from him when it’s time.”
Jacob crouches, gets an arm under Seth, and brings him to his feet. Seth sways into him, wrung out.
“Ma, stop,” Seth slurs against Jacob’s shoulder. “I don’t want it. I don’t... want it.” His eyes roll back, and Jacob scoops him up into his arms.
I look at Jacob over my mother’s shoulder. “He’ll sleep a day, maybe two, and then he’s fine. I promise.”
Jacob looks at me, and there’s no anger in it. There’s grief, and there’s an understanding I didn’t earn, the look of a man who’s loved children that came to him broken and never once asked them to be anything else.
He gives me a single nod. Then he turns, my brother cradled against him, and carries him toward the portal. My mother stays where she is, looking from Seth’s slack face to mine.
“You selfish boy.” Her voice is barely there. “Why would you do this to me?”
“I can feel it, Ma. Seth needs this road. It’s only for a time, and his magic comes back to him. I’d swear it on anything. You just have to trust me one more time.”
She shoves me once more, weaker than the first. She turns and runs for the portal, both hands over her face. Then she’s through it and gone, the light folding shut behind her.
It’s just me at the edge of the Glen, holding magic that was never mine to keep.
I wipe the wet from my face and turn for the cottage, and I don’t make it two steps.
Amir stands between me and the door, his hands clasped behind his back. Those golden eyes find me.
“That was noble,” he says. “Handing your brother the very thing he begged for. There is a particular cruelty in giving a man exactly that.” He tilts his head. “Sometimes it is the only way to teach him it was never what he needed. You let him hold it, feel its weight, and find out what he was really reaching for.”
“So you came to stop me too. Get in line. It’s a long one.”
“I would never stop you.” He takes his time crossing to me. “I will only say that I am disappointed, and I will not pretend otherwise. You have chosen to be a warden of corpses over the king of Wintermoon. Do you have any idea, Aaron, what you hold in your hands? What you would squander?”
“I’m done answering your questions. My turn to ask a few. Why do you want this throne off your hands so badly? Why would you burn the whole Witching Glen down just to back one warlock into doing what you want? Your three days were never a deadline. They were a leash.”
He grins at me and says nothing.
“You believe you can change them,” he says. “It is a noble thought. It is also a child’s thought.”
I flex my fingers, the new power humming through them, more than I’ve ever held. “Funny thing. With all this in me, I see things I couldn’t before.” My eyes go to his. “I know why you really want them gone. The coven turned on you in the Great War. So did the dragon shifters. But the dragons, you forgave. You let them keep their place in Wintermoon, walking our markets. The coven did the same. Them, you’ll never forgive. So you’d rather wipe them out than face the double standard in your own house.”
Amir’s grin holds, but something behind it shifts.
“You don’t know the first thing about betrayal.” His voice drops, the game gone out of it. “You think it began for me in the Great War. It began before these lands had a name—before these mountains rose. I was betrayed by men I crowned and men I loved, and in the end by my own blood.” His golden eyes settle on mine. “Do not lecture me about who deserves my mercy.”
“I’m not asking for your mercy. I’m telling you how this goes.” I don’t blink. “You gave me three days. I’ve got the power to keep those people alive, and I’m going to use it to bring that realm back. When they turn on you again—you’re so sure they will—I’ll be standing right there to see it. They’ll just be alive to do it.”
He studies me, then turns to leave.
“You’re not the king I used to know,” I say to his back. “The Amir I first met wouldn’t have needed to play a man like a board piece. He’d have just asked.”
He stops and turns back. His face is shut as ever.
“You are young,” he says at last, “and you carry more power than one your age was ever meant to. The two together make a dangerous thing.” He lifts his gaze to the dark sky, and whateverhe finds there gentles him a fraction. “Mother Fate shaped you for something larger than I can yet see. I will not stand in the way of her work. But do not lecture me about change, Aaron Blackwood. You have only begun to give things up. I will be curious to see what remains of you when the giving is done.”
“Leaving without a goodbye, Majesty? And here I thought we’d grown so close.”
Amir’s whole face curdles. Josiah strolls out of the dark in a black suit, hands already moving, red eyes bright.
“Where is your beautiful Layla?” Amir asks, flat. “Why are you here and not with her, where someone might enjoy your company?”
