I step into his body and wrap my arms around him. Thiago stiffens, but then he slowly relaxes into the embrace, his callused hand coming up to stroke the ripple of my spine through my nightgown.
He’s been there every step of the way for me.
It’s only right that I return the favor.
“I wish that I could take that away for you.” And maybe this is the reason I looked into his eyes that long-ago night of Lammastide and saw the other half of my soul.
We have both been lonely.
We have both been lost.
I always thought I was the broken one, but maybe he’s broken too? Maybe our jagged edges can meet in the middle and somehow… fill each other up.
“Pain is what shapes you,” he murmurs, cupping my face and tilting my chin up. His gaze falls to my lips. “I would never give up a single moment of suffering, a single step in my path, because it all brought me here. To you, Vi.”
This prince. I don’t deserve him.
But my tongue, as always, won’t say what I want to say. “Even if I make deals with eldritch creatures?”
Thiago’s gaze falls to my lips. “Keeps life interesting.”
“Mmm.” The way he’s looking at me. “I feel like you’re trying to make life interesting yourself….”
It’s easier to steer the conversation away from those things best left avoided.
“Do tell?” His voice is like molten honey as he lowers his head. “Perhaps you would prefer to make a deal with me?”
“What kind of deal?”
“The kind where—"
A sharp rap comes at the door, breaking us apart.
Even after all these months, I still feel like someone is going to catch us together and I should feel guilty about it. But that was only the poison my mother whispered in my ear. This wicked prince was my husband and lover long before I remembered it.
And while I still can’t recall the day we first met—the first time we kissed, the first time we made love—I refuse to let my mother inhibit this moment. She stole my memories from me, but she won’t steal him.
Thiago laughs under his breath, as if my guilt flashes across my face. “Later,” he promises. And then he goes to answer the door.
Because the only reason someone would knock on the bedchamber of the Prince of Evernight when they know he’s with me is if something has happened.
“Tell me.” Thiago sinks into the enormous throne-like chair at the head of the table in his council chambers.
In this moment, he’s no longer merely my husband.
He’s the Prince of Evernight. The Lord of Whispers and Lies. The Master of Darkness. And the most dangerous male in the south. Clad in black leather like this, with only a hint of the darkened tattoos that ripple over his chest peeking out of the opening of his shirt, you could be forgiven for thinking of him as a mere warlord. But there’s something about the firm set of his shoulders and the regal tilt of his head that makes it clear he rules every inch of this castle.
There’s no sign of the dark wings that belong to his true form—he’s mastered the art of shifting between his Seelie and Unseelie forms so well that even I wouldn’t know they exist, if not for the fact that sometimes he’ll slip into his natural form when we’re in private.
And this far south of the wall, where the Seelie rule, he cannot afford to let others know he’s not entirely one of them, even though my mother has long suspected.
The word “Unseelie” is a dangerous weapon this far south.
I circle the room and sink into the seat at his side as the rest of Thiago’s court grimace at each other. Thalia—Thiago’s cousin—had been the one at the door, and she’d hauled him away to discuss something urgent while I dressed, so I’m as much in the dark as anyone else.
Two of his finest generals, Baylor and Eris, are both dressed in leather as they scowl at the table. Thalia reclines like some lady of the manor, though her green eyes are watchful, and Finn, the last remaining member of Thiago’s hand-picked court, leans back in his chair at the end of the table, tossing grapes in the air and catching them as if he doesn’t have a care in the world.
One chair remains empty at the end of the table.
It’s where Baylor’s twin brother, Lysander, should sit—though since my sister put an arrow in him six months ago, there’s been no sign of him. I’d thought him dead, though Baylor assures me that he and his brother can’t be killed. Not with the Grimm still alive.
“Adaia’s roused her border lords.” This comes from Baylor, who is enormous, his shoulders straining the breadth of plate leather and tendons cording in his powerful forearms. I’ve seen him wield a six-foot-long broadsword when he trains with Eris, and he swings it as deftly as though it weighs five pounds.
With long blond hair, golden eyes that gleam like a wolf’s, and a firm mouth that’s never seen a smile, he’s more than earned his title. Every single one of my mother’s generals swallow a little when they know they’re facing The Blackheart across the field of war. Centuries ago, he served the Grimm—one of the Old Ones who was locked away in a prison world during the last wars—and he’s not entirely fae.
But he’s not the most dangerous creature in the room.
No, that honor belongs to Eris, who leans back in her chair with her boots kicked up on the table and her dark brown hair braided in furrows across her scalp, to where it tumbles in a gleaming sheaf down her spine. “They’re staging at Caer Luwyn.”
“I thought there’d been no sign of the Asturian armies gathering?” Thiago asks sharply.
“There wasn’t.” Thalia reaches across the table to steal a strand of Finn’s grapes. “They appeared in a cloak of mist and all of a sudden.”
“Opposite Eidyn.” Thoughts race in my husband’s eyes.
It’s a terrible place to stage for an invasion. The western marshes are just as likely to swallow half my mother’s troops. And Eidyn will give us the better ground. No Asturian force has ever taken the keep.
Eris tosses her gauntlets on the scarred table. “Thalia’s spies tell us there’s a sea of gold and red marching north to join the first wave.”
I knew it was coming—my mother promised us war, after all—but after months of inactivity, there was a little kernel of me that hoped she might have come to her senses.
A foolish desire, for I know her best, after all. But it’s amazing what manner of hope you can conjure when you wish for something hard enough.
War.
It won’t just be two powerful kingdoms angling at each other. This will drag the entire Seelie Alliance into ruin.
Because I chose to love an enemy prince.
“Vi?” Thiago turns to me, and I blink out of the reverie.
“Yes?”
“You know your mother best. You know her forces. What do you think?”
“How many?” I ask, for the border lords—whilst fully aware of the danger they’re in—are barely loyal to Adaia. Once upon a time they belonged to the Kingdom of Evernight, and then there were long years where they sought to reign over themselves, until my mother slew their leader and brought them under her umbrella.
I’ve visited the border keeps, and while they don’t dare speak of freedom, I’ve heard the songs their bards play and seen the looks on their faces as they listen to “The Last Stand of Lord Balrogh.”