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Lyrena’s warm hand covered mine. I still gripped her arm. I hadn’t realized. But the warmth of her fingers against my own, ever cold, was eerily soothing. Had she warmed them with the fire that surged through her veins, the mirror of my brother’s?
For a second, it almost overwhelmed me. The similarity between them, the unspoken connection.
But I forced my eyes away, across the courtyard. I forced my feet to move, along that route my brother and I had walked a hundred times in the life I led before. The brief glimpse of a happiness that was never to truly be mine.
“Now, with this lingering threat, I hardly get to leave my rooms. Beyond the council chamber and the training yard, I know embarrassingly little of my own home…” I trailed off meaningfully.
I hoped Lyrena could not see my lie, did not realize that I’d reconnoitered the entire palace years before, when I’d first snuck out of the water gardens. But she was looking ahead then back, scanning, still in her role as guard even as she walked at my side.
“What would you like to see?” she asked, eyes flicking down one corridor even as we passed into the next.
“I wish to know what precisely I am ruling over,” I said as we walked through a dim corridor connecting the last courtyard to the next. I could see the light ahead, knew another palace guard would be waiting there. I had precious few moments before others could hear us once again. “Not just the shining, gilded bits. But the less savory as well.”
We were twenty steps from the courtyard.
I could feel the weight of Lyrena’s eyes upon me, pausing in their perpetual sweep.
“The goldstone palace is open to you, Your Majesty. Where do you wish to go?” she said. But the tone of her voice didn't match her words. There was warning in every syllable. She’d take me, I sensed, to the bowels of this palace. The torture chambers and prison cells. But she would not relish doing so, and she’d try to convince me otherwise.
Someone else hell-bent upon protecting me, because they thought they knew better. Because they thought I was too precious, too innocent, to handle the truth.
Midnight black eyes flashed in my mind.
I refused to acknowledge the sharp jerk in my chest in response.
Ten steps to the light.
“Take me to the human,” I said simply.
Lyrena did not break stride. The laugh that bubbled out of her throat lacked all of its usual warmth. It sounded like it would choke her, choke the joy right out of that beautiful, golden face.
“I cannot,” she said. “Arran Earthborn has hidden him away even from us.”
I blinked in disbelief, even as my feet continued forward. “How can that be?”
“It seems your Brutal Prince has learned a few tricks over the centuries,” Lyrena said. I hated the begrudging admiration in her voice. “Wherever he has hidden him, none under your command know. Which, I suspect, is what he intended.”
Of course it was. The fucking, Ancestors-damned bastard was determined to keep the upper hand, convinced that he knew better—
The bright sunlight flooded over us. We’d reached the next courtyard.
As expected, palaces guards were posted at each corner of the huge square.
Sunlight flooded in from the square of exposed sky, bright blue as my own eyes and unmarred by a single cloud. The goldstone pillars that lined the perimeter of the courtyard were not gilded in gems, but with an intricate inlaid mosaic. Blue eight-pointed stars, diamonds of carved mother-of-pearl, a green marble that must have been mined from some faraway land, all carefully placed together to create a repeating pattern around the cylindrical columns.
In the center, not a fountain bubbling away, but a raised platform, the edges painted with an alternating pattern of gold and turquoise. Once, a statute had graced the platform, raised several feet in the air. Or so Arthur told once told me—he’d also told me about how he’d blown the thing to smithereens with blast of fire when he was ten years old and still learning to control his power.
Now there was nothing but the raised, flat platform.
Or there ought to have been.
If not for the two figures dueling in the middle of it. One wielded a mighty sword, her brown skin gleaming under a sheen of sweat. The other swung a battle axe.
I didn’t stay to watch. If I did, I’d likely try to swipe Arran’s legs out from under him so that Gwen could land a painful blow. One that, of course, would not be fatal. Because even though she was my Goldstone now, she would not harm Arran—not fatally.
As I turned away, a gleam caught my eye.
I paused, blinking against the bright shine of Lyrena’s layers of gold accessories, catching the radiant sunlight. But it was not her golden cuffs or braid or tooth that was glowing. It was her eyes. They were ringed with desire as she stared at the spectacle unfolding on the raised platform.
