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I turned to see who he’d been looking at, for all the good it would do me, but before I could manage it, they singled themself out.
“You still put the future of our people in danger for your own selfish whims,” Vorian announced, not particularly loudly or... well, not even with terribly much passion in his own words. He sounded like a disinterested puppet, saying the right things only because his strings were being pulled. “You cannot be a prince of our people unless you put them first, because we cannot risk a king who thinks first of his cock, and only second of us.”
There was a collective intake of breath as everyone turned to stare at Vorian, and beside me, Kaelum stiffened.
A heavy silence fell before Vorian said the most chilling thing I’d ever heard in my life. “I challenge you, Kaelum. Prove your worth here in front of our people, or lose your place as our prince.”
I tried to jump in front of him, but Kaelum wrapped his arms tight around me, leaned down, and whispered into my ear. “This is a battle you cannot fight for me, my Lucas.”
I turned and hissed up at him, “This is a battle no one can fight, Kaelum. That guy is unbeatable.”
“And if I deserve to be prince, I will defeat him.”
Before I had a chance to throw back something about how ridiculous that was, and how unbeatable didn’t mean “unbeatable unless you deserve to be prince,” there was a sob from the center dais.
“You monster,” Kaelum’s mother cried. “You would truly take away my son.” She glared at Vorian like he was the lowest, most disgusting thing she could imagine.
While the crowd was busy rubbernecking her pounding a fist against the king’s shoulder, demanding that he stop this travesty as he pulled her into his lap and shushed her, muttering about how she was shaming their son, I watched Vorian.
The man who was planning on destroying my Kaelum was... not particularly happy. In fact, at the queen’s—hismother’s—anger, proclaiming Kaelum her only and beloved son, he flinched, staring at the floor in front of him. He didn’t look like a man relishing what he was about to win. He looked like a beaten dog, waiting for the final blow to fall.
Jesus.
I stared at him as Kaelum dragged me over to the dais and shoved me into his mother’s arms, whispering for her to take care of me, and of the other humans. To take us home if we wished to go, in the wake of his... defeat.
I looked up to meet his eye and realized with dawning horror that Kaelum fully expected Vorian to murder him, right here and now. And so did Vorian’s own mother.
CHAPTER30
KAELUM
Lucas met my eye with horror. His were glistening with tears, his small mouth trembling.
I had promised to protect him, and the best I could give him now was an attempt.
“Where is Jax?” I asked my father beyond him. Jax would be my second, someone to take up my mantle when I fell.
“He has not returned. We thought he flew with you.”
I huffed through my nose. He had not gone so far as Earth. He should have been back in half the time. Less.
I could not worry about what had happened to him. There would not be much longer for me to worry about anything at all.
But I needed a second—not someone to die in my stead, but someone to stand beside me as a symbolic gesture that I was not alone here, isolated and fighting on the wrong side.
I could not ask a warrior to die for me. If I did, I’d be outcast from my own people, and rightfully so. There would be no place for me, no place but Earth, and that was not my home.
Had Crux challenged me himself and forced Vorian to fight in his stead, he would have suffered similarly. But clearly, he had plotted this before we returned.
“I will stand beside you.” A true-born Thorzi warrior stepped forward, and I recognized one of my opponents from the tournament, a warrior I had defeated—Krazor.
He gave me a nod and clapped my shoulder, moving to stand at the side of the dais, out of the way.
And still, it was soothing to know I was not the only Thorzi who thought as I did. There was support here for me. That may not keep me alive, but it would protect my Lucas and see the humans who came to save our race were revered in the future.
For my whole life, my father had protected me. He had thought I was vulnerable, a hybrid warrior who could not stand the light of Lyr long enough to develop the powers a king must have, a child whose every brush with our world meant courting death.
But I was not only human, and I was not only Thorzi. I was both.
