KANE

THE BLOODRED MARBLE FLOORS OF the palace had always given away my brother and me as kids. The snapping of our feet, haphazard as we ran

and roughhoused and sent expensive sculptures toppling with our boyish glee. Too many lashings from my father and his enforcers had taught me to walk heel-toe to hide the noise. I stalked quietly past the dozens of soldiers. My heart thundered in my pilfered Fae armor.

In stark contrast to my slow, methodical steps, my mind was spiraling. In the shock and relief and sheer joy at holding Arwen—feeling her piled- too-high hair tickle my chin, inhaling her orange-blossom scent, kissing those lips…

Lost in all that honeysuckle and warmth, I’d forgotten what I’d come here for.

To die.

To kill my father, and thus, to die.

“And if I raised your lover from the soil…gave you the full Fae blood that you seek? If I said neither of you had to die?” Len had asked. “Would you still sacrifice yourself for the good of the realm?”

And what had I thought to myself?

No. Absolutely not. I’d wanted to tell him, F**k no, and frankly, fuck you for even asking.

And he had granted me my request regardless.

Perhaps he knew what I, in that moment, still hadn’t yet.

That if by some wretched, cosmic joke I found the other half of my heart still alive, that perhaps I’d choose not to give my life for the good of the realms. That I was a selfish, greedy bastard and I wanted nothing in this world but her. Not justice. Not revenge. Not to save the lives of millions of innocents.

Just. Her.

But that in a second cosmic joke—one surely the Fae Gods were beet- red with laughter over—I was incapable of being selfish with Arwen.

She’d never be able to let Lazarus live. Not before he’d captured her, and surely not now. She’d never let him conquer and maim and destroy. What was I to do? Hold her hostage? Force her to live a long life with me while everyone else suffered? Force her to live knowing that suffering was our fault, because we wanted to be happy? I’d never do that to her. And I’d never let her pay the ultimate price for Lazarus’s death.

So I’d have to instead, in her place.

Perhaps the man that wasn’t Len hadn’t known it all then. Perhaps he’d only hoped.

But I knew for certain—if I managed not to fuck up somehow—that my brusque, hurried I love you would serve as our last goodbye.

Arwen would make it to Hart. I had more faith in her than anyone. The rebel king would get her home safely. Across the channel or with a portal cast by the Antler coven. And I’d find the blade. I’d kill my father—fulfill the promise I’d made to that Fae God.

I’d die for the realms. I’d die for my people. I’d die for Arwen, so she could go on living.

By the time I’d reached Lazarus’s bedchamber—the door in the tiered glass atrium marked with the sigil of the moon—not one guard had even cast a glance in my direction. I raised a hand to the red stone handle, pulse thrumming.

“Hey,” a husky voice called to me. I said nothing, jangling the handle. “Hey!”

Open, damn it, open—

“I’m talking to you.” The silver guard drew nearer. A short, stocky oaf, his armor a little too big. “Are they still fucking?”

Acid singed my tongue even as relief loosened my shoulders. “Yep,” I said.

The guard nodded, impressed. “Good on him. I’d go for days with that little thing, too.”

I nearly bit through my tongue. “What’d he send you for?”

“Fresh trousers. Old man doesn’t have the self-control he used to.” The kingsguard stared at me like I’d spoken sacrilege.

I didn’t inhale.

My sword burned through the scabbard at my hip. I reached for it… Until the small man broke out in a braying, boisterous laugh. The

imbecile wheezed over and over, until tears had gathered behind the red glass that covered his crinkled eyes.

“Off you go,” he barked, patting me hard on the shoulder and sliding his lighte across the spelled door handle.

I let myself into my father’s room without another word. For a moment, bathed in near-darkness, all I could hear were my own shallow breaths and my heartbeat slamming too fast inside my head.

My father’s bedroom was dark and stagnant. A window had been left open, night air sending thin black curtains around like wisps of smoke, but the Solaris breeze did nothing to ease the thick air.

I squinted in the darkness—his bed was perfectly made, as always. Not a crease. Not a fold out of place. The vaulted ceilings and stone floor made for a chilling echo as I strolled through.

My hands raked over the face of his marble desk feeling for hidden cubbies and drawers. I combed through his orderly bookshelves for false walls, and then his armoires for the same. Past each rich tunic and robe, hunting for hinges or the smell of lighte or glimmer of magic. Under obsidian ottomans to inspect each marble tile, I crawled beneath the heavy

bed, palmed atop shelves for latches or keys or safes. I even dug through the pristine fireplace that hadn’t been lit in millennia. Nothing.

The room was bare of any blade.

He’s your father, I told myself while lodged under a leather reading chair. Where would he keep the only weapon that could kill him?

The sound of his voice in the doorway stalled the breath in my lungs. “On me, of course.”

My blood ran cold in my veins.

Slowly, I eased out from underneath the stiff leather. “Father.”

“Son,” he answered, closing the door behind him and peeling off his black-stitched formal coat. When he hung the refined piece on the coatrack, a mighty, glinting weapon shone from his scabbard.

Sheathed at his waist—the Blade of the Sun. Its hilt a dead giveaway, ornately encrusted with the nine Holy Stones.

Focus tunneled my vision.

Four feet from me—three, perhaps—was my ability to become full- blooded Fae. To regain my dragon form. To take Arwen’s fate away from her, save her life, solidify her many thousands of years of living along with millions of other innocents…

“So that’s where you went,” Lazarus almost hummed, prowling toward me, so slow I wasn’t sure he was actually moving.

I fought every urge to scramble backward. “Get out of my mind.”

Lazarus unleashed a repellent smile. “It seems I’ve been stood up. Any idea where my harvest has run off to?”

My mind guttered into stillness. Utter silence. I knew better than to think of her or where she was now.

“I’ll kill you for that,” I vowed. “For what you tried to do.”

“With the blade strapped to my body? That would be some trick.”

“That it would.” My lips curled from my teeth in a menacing grin. “Want to see?”

I prowled closer.

Lazarus’s deep laughter halted my movements. My father sank comfortably into a velvet chair. He unsheathed the Blade of the Sun,

winding the weapon aimlessly between his hands. “In all your foolishness and impulse, my dragon child…have you not realized what you’ve given me?”

I said nothing. Thought nothing.

“A true Fae heir, my boy. The only one I ever wanted.” Oh, Gods—

Me.

“I’ll never sit on the Lumerian throne.”

He only smirked. A game—it was all a game to him. “If not you, and not Arwen’s child, then who?”

“Hart Renwick.” The rebel king could have the realm for all I cared. I wanted nothing to do with it. “He’s been building quite the army.”

Lazarus only cackled—genuinely, bafflingly amused. “If you think I’m threatened by the rebel king, you haven’t been paying attention. The boy is little more than a halfling.” His teeth gleamed in the spare moonlight. “When I am gone, the only man who shall sit upon my throne and call himself King of All Realms will be true Fae. If not you, son, then you must understand why Arwen’s womb is my only option.”

I will kill you. I am going to fucking kill you. “You will not touch her.

Not ever again.”

“How can you be certain she isn’t already with child?”

I flinched, and hated myself for it. “She would have told me.”

“Perhaps.” He stood and circled over to the bed, smoothing out a crease I couldn’t see. “Or perhaps she was ashamed, son. Perhaps it was painful for her at first, but…All those scars along her back, and burns across her stomach…Women like that.” He shook his head at the memory. “Eventually they start to like it.”

I lunged for him, sword raised, aiming for his cracked, shriveled heart. Steel met steel with ferocity, and a furious growl ripped from him. The

Blade of the Sun rippled with frost in his grip, sending icy sparks splitting where our weapons clashed. My mortal muscles barked with the force of his blow.

My next strike knocked the blade from his hands. We both watched in dismay as it scattered across the room.

I lunged after it, but spears of solid ice shot from my father’s palms.

Narrowly dodging the shards, I dropped down to the ground and scrambled behind the iron bed frame. Glass shattered behind me, raining down in bursts. Books clattered to the floor, a thick paperweight toppled. I could taste my fear. Could feel my hands shaking like they’d never done before. I’d never been so…fragile. One of those spears—just one wrong move—and I’d be dead.

“How long have you wished to do this?” I croaked.

Lazarus launched javelins of solid ice in my direction as I clawed my way across the floor. A single spear shot past my head, and wisps of my own black hair fell to the floor between my hands. But the blade glinted on the thin, gray rug by a leather chair—I just had to wrap my hands around it. Just once—

Disdain clouded my father’s voice. “You have never understood a single thing, have you, son?”

I dove, one arm outstretched, reaching, straining to touch—

But a mist of suffocating cold slammed into my chest and sent me flying backward atop crushed glass. My helmet flew from my head, teeth biting into my tongue. Hot blood filled my mouth.

“You think I want to kill you?” Lazarus thundered. “You’re my fucking son.”

For a moment, only our ragged breaths rent through the room.

My voice was so low I could barely hear myself. “You actually want me to rule alongside you?” My throat tightened with some emotion I could only attribute to a far, far younger version of myself.

My father’s silence spoke a hundred years’ worth of words between us. He did not want to kill me. All this time.

Furious breaths heaved in and out of his lungs.

But his labored breathing—I’d never heard my father pant. Not when using his lighte, not ever…This…it seemed difficult for him. Something was wrong.

With a bracing breath I stood and lunged for him once more, throwing my body into his. We slammed into the floor with too much force—my chin rebounding off his sternum, his head smacking the stone with a whack.

I braced for the ice. For his power—but nothing came.

Instead, pain bloomed across my face as his fist—the iron fist of a true Fae—collided with my jaw.

My vision blurred, my ears rang…and yet… I laughed.

He had punched me. My own father. Because he was out of lighte.

I reared my fist back and delivered an answering blow. My father’s nose crushed beneath my fist, and the feeling—the sensation—was so cathartic I did it again. And again.

He sputtered blood.

And then pain cut through my side. My ribs, my kidney—as his fist slammed into my body.

Across the floor my knuckles grazed a candlestick. One that must have fallen in the hail of ice spears. My fingers wrapped around the pewter and before my father could slam another fist into my face, I brought it down across the crown of his head.

The crunch—and his pained groan—sent adrenaline into my bones. “Where are my Gods-damned guards,” he bellowed. “Guards!”

I wondered the same. We’d been making enough noise to raise alarm bells. I could only hope something had stalled them. And would continue to.

“Guards!” he screamed again.

“Scared to fight me like a mortal man?”

He didn’t answer as blood leaked from his nose, brows furrowed in both fury and concentration. He’d never looked so old to me. So tired.

My nails dug into him, scratching across his wrinkled face, the paperlike skin of his ancient neck, drawing blood—

His blow to my liver was like being run over by a stallion. I hadn’t experienced physical pain such as this in my life. Mortal pain.

But our brawl—

We’d landed within grasping distance of the Blade of the Sun. My eyes cut to its glinting face on the thin, gray rug beneath that leather chair, bathed in darkness, mocking me—

Another blow from his fist smashed across my face. Pain sprang behind my eyelids and in my shattered jaw.

His fist collided again and the world expanded and pinpricked around me. Nauseating and unfiltered. Time slowing. Something wet spilling from my nose and down the back of my throat.

I swung with my free hand, but each punch of mine was weaker, and weaker still.

Until I blinked through swollen eyes to find him brandishing my own sword above me. Double-bladed, vicious point hovering just over my throat. That steel an oath of death.

But my fingers…

They’d just barely reached the clean-cut edge of the gray rug.

With the last dregs of strength I had, with cords of muscle I hadn’t ever used before, I wrapped my hand around that thin edge and pulled.

“Goodbye, my boy.”

Lazarus hefted the sword up and brought it down just as the Blade of the Sun’s hilt kissed the skin of my palm.

And in that moment, the one in which the blade met my flesh—

All noise hollowed out to a single ringing silence. The ground beneath me spider-webbed out with jet-black shadows—my shadows, folding and constructing themselves into my wings. Metallic lighte filled my nostrils as I sucked in the first deep breath I’d been granted since the moment Arwen jumped from that platform in Hemlock.

And then I was beautifully, horribly, mercilessly ripped apart.