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“That girl has always possessed a spectacular talent for being where she shouldn’t.”
Ruhn controlled the anger thrumming through him, his shadow magic seeking to veil him, shield him from sight. Another reason his father resented him: beyond his Starborn gifts, the bulk of his magic skewed toward his mother’s kin—the Fae who ruled Avallen, the mist-shrouded isle in the north. The sacred heart of Faedom. His father would have burned Avallen into ashes if he could. That Ruhn did not possess his father’s flames, the flames of most of the Valbaran Fae, that he instead possessed Avallen abilities—more than Ruhn ever let on—to summon and walk through shadows, had been an unforgivable insult.
Silence rippled between father and son, interrupted only by the ticking metal of the orrery at the other end of the room as the planets inched around their orbit.
His father picked up the prism, holding it up to the firstlights twinkling in one of the three crystal chandeliers.
Ruhn said tightly, “Tiberian said the Governor wants these murders kept quiet, but I’d like your permission to warn my mother.” Every word grated. I’d like your permission.
His father waved a hand. “Permission granted. She’ll heed the warning.”
Just as Ruhn’s mother had obeyed everyone her entire life.
She’d listen and lie low, and no doubt gladly accept the extra guards sent to her villa, down the block from his own, until this shit was sorted out. Maybe he’d even stay with her tonight.
She wasn’t queen—wasn’t even a consort or mate. No, his sweet, kind mother had been selected for one purpose: breeding. The Autumn King had decided, after a few centuries of ruling, that he wanted an heir. As the daughter of a prominent noble house that had defected from Avallen’s court, she’d done her duty gladly, grateful for the eternal privilege it offered. In all of Ruhn’s seventy-five years of life, he’d never heard her speak one ill word about his father. About the life she’d been conscripted to.
Even when Ember and his father had their secret, disastrous relationship, his mother had not been jealous. There had been so many other females before her, and after her. Yet none had been formally chosen, not as she was, to continue the royal bloodline. And when Bryce had come along, the few times his mother had met her, she’d been kind. Doting, even.
Ruhn couldn’t tell if he admired his mother for never questioning the gilded cage she lived in. If something was wrong with him for resenting it.
He might never understand his mother, yet it didn’t stop his fierce pride that he took after her bloodline, that his shadow-walking set him apart from the asshole in front of him, a constant, welcome reminder that he didn’t have to turn into a domineering prick. Even if most of his mother’s kin in Avallen were little better. His cousins especially.
“Perhaps you should call her,” Ruhn said, “give the warning yourself. She’d appreciate your concern.”
“I’m otherwise engaged,” his father said calmly. It had always astonished Ruhn: how cold his father was, when those flames burned in his veins. “You may inform her yourself. And you will refrain from telling me how to manage my relationship with your mother.”
“You don’t have a relationship. You bred her like a mare and sent her out to pasture.”
Cinders sparked through the room. “You benefited quite well from that breeding, Starborn.”
Ruhn didn’t dare voice the words that tried to spring from his mouth. Even as my stupid fucking title brought you further influence in the empire and among your fellow kings, it still chafed, didn’t it? That your son, not you, retrieved the Starsword from the Cave of Princes in Avallen’s dark heart. That your son, not you, stood among the long-dead Starborn Princes asleep in their sarcophagi and was deemed worthy to pull the sword from its sheath. How many times did you try to draw the sword when you were young? How much research did you do in this very study to find ways to wield it without being chosen?
His father curled a finger toward him. “I have need of your gift.”
“Why?” His Starborn abilities were little more than a sparkle of starlight in his palm. His shadow talents were the more interesting gift. Even the temperature monitors on the high-tech cameras in this city couldn’t detect him when he shadow-walked.
His father held up the prism. “Direct a beam of your starlight through this.” Not waiting for an answer, his father again put an eye to the metal viewing contraption atop the prism.
It ordinarily took Ruhn a good amount of concentration to summon his starlight, and it usually left him with a headache for hours afterward, but … He was intrigued enough to try.
Setting his index finger onto the crystal of the prism, Ruhn closed his eyes and focused upon his breathing. Let the clicking metal of the orrery guide him down, down, down into the black pit within himself, past the churning well of his shadows, to the little hollow beneath them. There, curled upon itself like some hibernating creature, lay the single seed of iridescent light.
He gently cupped it with a mental palm, stirring it awake as he carefully brought it upward, as if he were carrying water in his hands. Up through himself, the power shimmering with anticipation, warm and lovely and just about the only part of himself he liked.
Ruhn opened his eyes to find the starlight dancing at his fingertip, refracting through the prism.
His father adjusted a few dials on the device, jotting down notes with his other hand.
The starlight seed became slippery, disintegrating into the air around them.
“Just another moment,” the king ordered.
Ruhn gritted his teeth, as if it’d somehow keep the starlight from dissolving.
Another click of the device, and another jotted note in an ancient, rigid hand. The Old Language of the Fae—his father recorded everything in the half-forgotten language their people had used when they had first come to Midgard through the Northern Rift.
The starlight shivered, flared, and faded into nothing. The Autumn King grunted in annoyance, but Ruhn barely heard it over his pounding head.
