Page 153 of The Cost of Blood and Bonds

He goes completely still, and his expression empties out in a way that makes my stomach drop.

Then I hear the footsteps, closing in from all directions.

Figures emerge from the trees. One. Two. Five. Ten.

They’re not nobles or contenders. They’re dressed in rags, their eyes promising violence, and weapons clutched in scarred hands. They’re the criminals Father throws into the trials to thin the herd. Murderers and thieves offered a choice between execution and the Weeping Woods.

Then my focus snags on a face I recognize.

Tommin.

Our eyes meet for half a heartbeat, and understanding slams into place. When Father pressed me about the lockpick outside his chambers, I gave him a name. Tommin’s name. I provided a name that wasn’t hers. I told myself it was protection, a delay, a harmless misdirection, and nothing would come of it.

Father turned it into a death sentence.

The nausea hits so fast I nearly double over. I made a choice, and a man is here dying for it, and there’s nothing I can do to take it back.

I don’t get time to sit with it; they’re spreading out, surrounding us. Grier and Finn move to flank me with their hands on their weapons.

“Well, well.” The leader steps forward. He’s built like a wall, with a scar running from his temple to his jaw. “Look what we found, boys. The little prince himself.”

“We don’t want trouble,” Grier says, keeping his voice even.

“Trouble?” He laughs, circling me with the ease of a man who knows he has the numbers. “No trouble at all. Just a little justice.” He spits at my feet. “The King sent us in here to die. Seems only fair we take his son with us.”

“I’m not my father.” I keep my voice calm, even though everything inside me is screaming to find her, to keep searching, to get away from this.

“No? You wear his face, live in his castle.” He draws his blade. “Close enough for me.”

They move all at once, and the world erupts. Grier takes two down before a third catches him from behind. Finn is a blur of steel, but there are too many, and we weren’t ready, weren’t prepared, weren’t paying attention⁠—

Someone kicks my legs out from under me, and the ground slams into me all at once. A boot finds my ribs before I can roll away, then my face, and the world whites out for a heartbeat, copper flooding my mouth.

“Hold him.”

Hands wrench my arms back and force me to my knees. Through blurred vision, Finn and Grier come into focus, and they’re both restrained with blades pressed to their throats.

“He’s different!” Finn shouts, struggling against the men holding him. “He’s not like the King. He’s been fighting against him⁠—”

His gaze snaps past me and finds Tommin, and his face fractures. “Tommin, please⁠—”

“SHUT UP!” The leader backhands him so hard his head snaps to the side. “One more word, and we slit your throats too.”

Finn goes silent with blood dripping from his lip, but his eyes find mine, terrified.

The leader turns back to me and raises his blade.

“Any last words, little prince?”

I stare up at him. At the sword that’s about to end my life. And all I can think is how I’m never going to see her again or hear her laugh. The thought swallows me whole, drowning out the blade and the men and the cold ground beneath my knees. Somewhere far away, the leader says something, but it’s muffled and distant, like I’m underwater.

I didn’t find her. I promised I’d find her, and I didn’t. The tears come before I can stop them. I should have gone with her. I should have never let her go in alone.

Something heavy hits the ground beside me. There’s screaming and blades singing through the air, but all of it is dampened.

Hands grab me and shake me, but I’m frozen, pulled under by a grief I can’t surface from.

I’m never going to see her again. The thought spirals mercilessly in my head. I go somewhere no one can reach me. I fall into the memory of her in the gardens, her asking me to call her Ella, asking me to find her. It settles the noise in my head. Then I realize there’s actually silence around me.