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Arthur did. Arthur cared.
Which was why he was meant to be king.
He’d been training for this moment since we’d come squalling into the world twenty-five years ago. No one had expected him to ascend the throne so young, not when a powerful fae like our father could live past a thousand years. But Arthur was fourteen the first time he’d led forces into battle. By the time he was eighteen, he’d won over the people of Baylaur, our capital city, by capturing smugglers and distributing their wealth to the citizens rather than keeping it for the crown. He was destined by his very crown of golden hair to be a great and mighty king.
Mighty king, annoying as shit brother. He was trying to bait me, and I was tempted to let him. The knife holstered against my thigh had returned to the same temperature as my body, warm and close as a limb. He wanted another go at it. I could see the desire to win written in his eyes. That alone stilled my hand.
If we fought a hundred times, I’d win the majority. Being left on your own for twenty years has its advantages. But in any given match, my brother might best me. And I refused to give him the satisfaction.
“Well-educated enough to know the spare has never ascended, not in seven thousand years. A perfect line of succession straight from the Ancestors down to you, King Arthur,” I said, bowing low. Exposing my neck. Offering submission—to the only person who would ever be worthy of it.
I felt a flicker of warmth. Not from the sun overhead or the exertion, but from flames. Arthur’s fingertips hovered above the nape of my neck, exposed by the long plait of white hair draped over my shoulder. Tonight, if I had to attend this ghastly event, my braid would be woven with stands of pearls and diamonds. Now, the mass of shining white that fell past my shoulder blades was adorned only with a bit of gold rope—strands of precious metal braided together before being twisted into the long plaits favored by elemental fae females.
Arthur loosed the flames just a little until they singed the tiny hairs still curled with sweat and heated the gold rope where it was knotted at my nape. Then the heat was gone, and my brother stepped away.
A time-honored tradition. A show of my acceptance of his power and his reign. After the Joining, when he was finally crowned High King of Annwyn, every member of his court would step forward to repeat the same ritual. But here, in the privacy of the training ring, with only his guards looking on, it was just ours. Not an act of subservience, but protection. My brother was the only one who had ever protected me—but only once he had come of age.
Before that, I learned to protect myself.
“What are the odds I can convince you to wear something appropriate this evening?” Arthur asked, beginning to shuck off his leather armor to reveal the softer, flowing white tunic beneath.
Gawayn stepped up, taking my brother’s sweaty discards. Captain of the Goldstone Guard, but also a glorified handmaid. I bit my lip to keep from pointing it out. Gawayn tolerated me on my best days.
“I wasn’t planning on wearing this.” I motioned down at my clothing, dark with sweat.
Or at least it would have been if it was not already dark to begin with. Black gossamer silk draped in layers to form a tunic that left my shoulders and a swath of my stomach exposed, held in place with a brown leather harness. My skirt was a similar style, secured with a belt and falling from my hips in clever panels so I could move and fight. Like the metallic strands braided into my hair, the buckles and loops of the harness were gold. I did not look entirely uncouth.
“I would settle for that,” Arthur sighed. “If you would condescend to wear it in white.”
“Pale colors do not suit me,” I teased, sheathing my second knife.
Arthur was down to tight knee trousers and his billowing shirt. The tight leather belts holding my garments in place were starting to itch.
“You are made up of pale colors.”
He was right about that, at least. White hair, alabaster skin, pale blue eyes.
Arthur crossed his arms over his chest, rising to his full height—trying and failing to intimidate me. “Seafoam green,” he ordered.
I countered. “Hunter green.”
“Turquoise.” Counteroffer and a sigh of brotherly frustration.
It was stupid, really. He was the King of the Elemental Fae and me, the Crown Princess. And we were arguing about what color I would wear to dinner.
To Arthur, it was political. The terrestrials were here. The tenor of the elemental court was stilted on a normal day. On a night such as this…
But when you’d spent twenty years without choices, even the small ones mattered.
My brother must have remembered that for in the next breath, his jaw softened.
“Emerald,” he offered.
“Done.”
That was the real reason Arthur would make a great king. Not because of feats of bravery defending Annwyn or tossing gold to peasants. He was empathetic. While most elemental fae were worried about hiding their true emotions so they could manipulate a situation, Arthur truly let himself feel his. Which meant when he saw someone struggling, he could feel that too.
Maybe it was a side effect of being locked away for so long, or maybe he’d simply stolen all of those traits away from me in the womb. But I was wary, sarcastic, and too proficient with a blade to make friends.
