Page 105 of Fate of the Sun King

It doesn’t matter. That future died a long time ago.

Maybe it never even started, and I’ve been kidding myself all along. Tyr was the king, and anyone he bonded with had to be chosen through the Trials. I was probably never really an option, at least not officially.

But now I’ll never know.

I settle back and listen to the sound of the waves crashing on the shore as we enjoy the solitude together. This is one of the few times in my week when I finally feel at peace. When I can escape the tumult of my churning thoughts.

After being tethered to this family since I was a small child, there are days when I think I would have been better off abandoned to the forest where Kyros found me.

After he got over the initial shock of my entrance, he scooped me up and brought me back to his hunting lodge in the forest. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven, and that was when I met Atlas and Tyr, both of them only a few years older than me. We spent weeks together running around, learning how to catch small game, and getting into the kinds of mischief small children are known for. It might have been the happiest time of my life. I’d escaped a nightmare and woken up in a dream. I thought about my mother and brother all the time, but I wanted so badly to forget.

It wasn’t until they brought me back to Aphelion that I learned I was being conscripted into service. I was too young to know any better, but I joined a group of young High Fae who were all being trained as the Sun King’s future warders. It was a grueling process—only a few ever developed the skills demanded of them—and openings in the king’s inner circle were rare.

The warders were also a creation of King Cyrus—the same king who’d orchestrated the Trials. Much like his misplaced optimism regarding the Final Tribute, he used the warder corps as an opportunity to elevate those who’d come into this life with nothing more than a name. In theory, it sounds nice. In practice, it’s more complicated.

Atlas, Tyr, and I were already friends, and the others resented my closeness with them. I was determined to prove that I belonged there, so I trained until I collapsed each day. That dedication won me a spot as the youngest warder the Sun Palace had ever seen, though I know there were those who claimed I’d only been given that honor because of my relationship with the princes.

Nevertheless, I underwent the painful process of growing my wings. It’s an unusual and rare bit of magic that I couldn’t explain if you held a crossbow to my chest, but an enchanted object was used to perform the ceremony.

I’ll never forget the agony that ripped across my body when my new appendages tore through my skin like a butterfly cracking out of its cocoon. It took months of training my muscles so the weight didn’t cause my back to ache and many more to use them for flight. Despite the pain, I’d considered it an honor and a stroke of luck that Kyros found me in the trees that day.

Little did I know it would all become more like a curse.

My thoughts wander back to the present and to Tyr, who is now watching me.

His brows furrow as though he’s wondering what I’m thinking about. I wish he would speak. I sometimes wonder if he’s forgotten how.

He used to be such a different person. Bold and loud, sometimes to his detriment, but he’s only a shell of the man I knew. The man I thought I might fall in love with once upon a time. And it’s not that I don’t love him like this, but it’s the kind of love bred by the need to protect. It’s not the love either of us wanted.

“I was thinking about how we met,” I say, answering his unspoken question. “The look on your father’s face when I jumped out with that stick.” I laugh at the memory, and Tyr’s mouth tips up into the smallest of smiles.

“I was no more cultured than a bridge troll,” I add, hoping to elicit another, but he sighs and then turns away, looking out the window.

“Is there anything you need?” I ask. “Anything I can bring you?” I hate how helpless I feel whenever I’m around him. It’s enough to dread coming here, but if I stopped too, then Tyr would truly have no one left, and I can’t do that.

He shakes his head, still not looking at me. And I take that as my cue that he’s done for the day.

“I’ll bring you some new books,” I say, looking over the shelves of stories I know he’s heard a hundred times. “What if we did those exercises? I’ll come back tomorrow.”

I try to get him to move as often as I can. I’m worried about him wasting away to nothing confined to this small space. Sometimes he humors me and does what I ask, but I can tell his heart is never really in it. I need him to fight harder. I need him to fight against this becoming his only fate. With Atlas spiraling and playing games, I’m more sure than ever that Tyr is vulnerable.

“Tyr,” I say, crouching down as I grip his forearm. “I need you to be strong. I don’t know what’s going on, but I think that whatever Atlas is doing has the potential to go very wrong for him. I need you to be ready.”

He turns and looks down at me, and I swear that for the first time in decades, I see something flicker in his gaze that looks like more than just resigned defeat. I squeeze his arm, and he looks down to where I’m holding him before he looks up. He tips his chin ever so slightly, though I’m not entirely sure what it means.

“Please,” I say again. “I’m… I don’t know yet, but I can’t keep doing this, and you can’t either.”

He nods again and swallows, and I stand to leave, a burning weight burrowing through my chest.

After I close the door, I wind down the stairs, lost in my thoughts. I forget my usual protocol and open the door without listening to check if anyone is walking by. There’s the sound of someone stumbling and an “Oh!” as I emerge. A High Fae female is currently bending over, picking up a pile of towels. She appears to be trying very hard to avoid my gaze.

I watch her, wondering if she was leaning against the door. Was she listening?

“What are you doing?” I ask, and she looks up. I recognize her as the same lady’s maid I saw with Apricia earlier. The same one I saw at the intake interviews. There’s still something familiar about her I can’t place my finger on.

“Sorry, I was just passing, and I tripped,” she says, scooping up the towels into an armful, not bothering to fold them back up. “Sorry to have disturbed you.”

And then she ducks her head and scurries away.