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I had often wondered if the reason I lived at all was because I’d had no power for my brother to steal, even as fetuses inside our mother’s hostile womb.
“No one doubted Arthur,” Arran said quietly, eyes still focused intently on me. As if there were no crashing waterfalls, no goldstone palace beyond. No revenge.
“The Dowager would argue that is because she kept me hidden from sight. An oddity to be trotted out for state occasions, but nothing more. Nothing dangerous.” I bit down on my tongue, holding back the confession that had almost sprung forth. The other reason she kept me hidden—so that no one might suspect my lack of power.
I couldn’t give Arran that truth. It was too dangerous to the fragile trust growing between us. It would derail the mission to avenge Arthur. It would change everything. I was running out of time, and I could not share that secret.
But all the others spilled out of me.
“The… violation… it began when I was eight years old. I was not an obedient child. I failed to please the Dowager again and again. So she punished me. Or rather… she brought in her courtier, a powerful magic wielder, to punish me.”
I’d thought Arran’s eyes were black. But the darkness that filled them then… it was not like the one we’d seen take over the humans, dead and unfeeling. It was the sort of darkness that promised to hunt and kill, to choke out every last bit of life—to end the world.
“What sort of violation?”
“The sort no child should have to endure.”
Beats of time passed.
Heartbeats. The water beating against the wall, the ground, the pool. The sun overhead, beating down. My blood thrummed in my veins, until the pressure of it threatened to explode out of me.
Then movement.
The stroke of Arran’s hand over his axe.
“I will kill her.”
I covered his hand with my own, feeling the vulnerable core inside of me hardening once more. “You will do no such thing. Vengeance, should I ever desire it, is mine.”
He stared long and hard, midnight dark eyes boring into me. Just when I expected him to turn and make for the gate, ready to ignore my edict, he blinked. His chin dipped a fraction—the only acknowledgment I would get.
In that moment, I feel more seen than I ever had before.
Even Arthur, who loved me as much as I loved him, had not truly been able to understand. But the Brutal Prince… whatever he had seen and endured, it allowed him to truly know. To understand without pity. To recognize that kill was mine.
What had he survived, to grant him this grotesque empathy?
Arran stared down at where my hand covered his, my pale skin a sharp contrast for his bronze.
He breathed out, the air rattling in his chest as he exhaled three centuries worth of pain.
“You have heard the stories about my… history,” he said, voice low.
My chest tightened. “Of course.”
“There is more to the story than is usually told.”
The cascade of waterfalls drowned out any noises beyond the water gardens. No one could hear us.
So, I made the same offer he’d given me. “Tell me.”
My heart began to break as he spoke.
“My powers manifested early—much earlier than other terrestrials. I was no more than a babe in arms, squalling as my mother walked in the garden. She took too long to feed me, and I turned every single one of her precious rose bushes to shriveled stems.” His voice was so even, so painfully emotionless.
I wondered how mine had sounded, moments before. I was the child of the elemental court, ought to have been able to keep a mask in place to cover useless emotions. But Arran was the unreadable one as he spoke.
“My power grew quickly. By the time I was ten years old, I was the Heir presumptive. Although no elemental heir had yet been born or foretold.”
