KANE

BY THE TIME MY BOOTS touched Shadow Woods soil I wasn’t surprised to find tawny leaves and a pleasant chill in the air. Crisp and clear,

scented with rain-soaked moss and fresh soil. Arwen would have loved the patchwork of russet, crimson, and bronze overhead—it would’ve reminded her of her mother, her childhood. In Amber, the trees shed vivid leaves like these year-round.

I’d arrived in time for one last sunny autumn day before winter blanketed my keep. Summer had slipped away while I’d been freefalling through both snow and unending grief, and I’d made it back just in time for the tail end of the season that conjured my murdered—

Get a hold of yourself. You can’t rage at the seasons.

The luftalvor loosed a low grunt and cocked its pink snout at me. His eyes softened with something I couldn’t place. Perhaps it was pity. I offered the creature a benign pat on his rump, and with a snuffle the woolly, winged white ox took off into the skies above.

His wings flapped against bright, clear blue.

Envy soared in my own chest. Longing. Sharp, splitting anguish. What I’d give for detachment.

And the decaying leaves crunching loudly underfoot, fragments of red and gold like faded confetti. And the sun too bright on my weak eyes and cracked lips.

And…perhaps there was no point in taking another step.

Nothing would bring Arwen back. And I was a selfish fucking bastard. I always had been. What shit did I give about the realms or my father or any of it?

I didn’t want to be alive. I wanted to be with Arwen, and live if that was the only means to do so. Perhaps I’d end myself right now and let the worms feast. Perhaps I’d find her in the nothingness.

Despite how achingly appealing oblivion sounded—how my boots had stalled, how my hands had begun to shake from sheer exhaustion—I stalked for the sentry towers on reticent legs.

It would be an insult to her memory to give up now. An insult to her bravery. Her hope.

Shadowhold’s walls were surrounded by the sentries—raised stone turrets that were manned all day and night, poised and ready to sound the alarm against anything meandering in my woods that shouldn’t be.

“My king?”

The soldier that called down had found me before I’d found him.

I squinted up into the vibrant canopy until I could make out the stone battlement and the dark, skeletal face poking out of it. The man lifted the vicious helmet from his head and appraised me with something like awe.

Did I look that broken down? Had they not thought I would return? Did I blame them?

A blaring horn sounded. Boomed through the forest and into the keep ahead. When I moved past a copse of dark, gnarled trees, wrought-iron gates wrenched open before me with a creak. That wrenching sounded like the first notes of a song I’d memorized long ago.

Behind them, my gothic castle loomed. Shadowhold.

All the stained-glass windows lit from within, my banners and spires and stonework, etched and carved with such care. The sea of colorful wartime tents. A fortress I’d made into a home not only for myself, and for her, but for so many innocent mortals and halflings. Men and women and children who had built full, satisfying lives here.

And some ego, some pride didn’t want them to see me limp through the gates.

Didn’t want all of those people who’d relied on me to protect them, some of whom had crossed the channel with me and fled Lumera for a better life, to see their king ravaged by heartache and frostbite. Bruised and starved and damaged.

So I stood at the keep’s precipice, frozen anew, my feet unwilling to propel me forward nor back as the horn’s tune blared, signaling my return.

Still as death itself. Weaker than I’d ever felt.

The men in the barracks lowered their swords and crossbows and legs of meat. The women and children with apples and gourds halted at the brutal sight of me.

Silence rent the brisk autumn air.

One single glossy red apple toppled from a dropped wicker basket and rolled across the dry grass.

Thousands of eyes held mine. Not one person moved, or spoke, or so much as shifted. I wondered if they, too, were holding their breath.

And then, though I couldn’t fathom why, one thick, heavy-browed soldier in only half his full armor knelt. A single knee pressed down to the dirt, helmet in his hands, eyes focused on me.

Before I could react, two soldiers beside him followed suit. Kneeling, removing their helmets. Gazes steadfast and unflinching.

Like a mighty ocean wave, cresting slowly and then crashing all at once

—the entire barracks stooped to their knees before me. A sea of men, women, children—soldiers, nobles, farmhands—bowing before their wayward king, returned home to them. For them.

And it was that truth that moved my feet down the wide avenue between all the kneeling faces. That truth that made my eyes burn and my throat bob.

Arwen was dead.

I’d not traveled to Pearl nor made my way home for her. And perhaps I hadn’t wanted to admit that to myself—that no valiant act of mine might bring her back—but I had found the White Crow, and I would slay my

father, not for Arwen, but for these people. These people who deserved a king that would fight for them no matter what he’d lost.

I’d spent decades driven by revenge. But Arwen had only known of Lazarus for mere months, and had still given her life in hopes of protecting the citizens of Evendell. She, too, had loved these people. And even if I did want to join her—to end myself and see if our souls might inhabit the same realm once more—I wouldn’t. Not yet.

Not until I could take Lazarus to his grave alongside me. I would not leave these innocent people in his clutches.

Shame should have been what coursed through me as I beheld their steadfast faces—I’d spent so long fighting for the wrong reasons, I’d not accomplished what I’d set out to do when I’d left them all, I’d not returned full-blooded…But it was unwavering duty that filled my veins instead as I walked past the hundreds of kneeling men and women. That was what propelled my stiff legs forward.

Past each unyielding gaze. The uncompromising resolve in their eyes.

My people, who I’d gone to the ends of the continent for. I was like them now. I knew what it meant to be vulnerable. I knew how desperately they needed me. And though I hadn’t known it, I’d needed them, too.

“You’re alive.”

A slight pinch tugged the side of my mouth up as I turned to find my commander standing just outside the, pitch-black war tent. Standing, among a sea of kneeling men. Rigid jaw, cropped hair, hulking black armor glinting in the sun, his sea-green eyes as resolute as his soldiers around him.

I didn’t trust my voice not to crack around the tightness in my throat as I said, “Give me a little credit.”

Griffin nodded, as if I hadn’t been joking, and then he, too, knelt before me. “Welcome home.”

MY MUSCLES BARKED WITH EVERY step across the castle grounds, past thick picnic blankets and baskets piled high with the harvest. I was sore from the

journey. Mortally sore, which was even less pleasant than usual and made me feel all too breakable.

Griffin swung the thick door of his cottage open and I stepped inside. A couple of years ago he’d built the place himself, nestled at the edge of the keep. He’d never liked sleeping in quarters made up each day by servants, nor having guards man his hall at night.

I sat down at his kitchen table with a wince. The marble tabletop was clean save for a heavy-looking sword and whetstone. Griffin loved nothing if not a solitary, tactile activity.

“Where have you been, Kane?”

Though he was my oldest friend, I’d likely spent less than two hours of my life in Griffin’s austere cottage. The walls were crafted of bare, whitewashed wood. The bed, on a loft above us, folded with care. Simple white cotton sheets. No books, no leafy greenery, no art. No clutter at all. “What are you, a monk?”

Griffin ignored me, closing the door and sitting backward on the other pale wooden chair to face me—two chairs. Griffin had two chairs. “You stopped sending ravens a week ago. I had a convoy ready to leave at first light.”

“We need to get you more chairs,” I said, twisting to scan the space. “Kane,” he bit out, voice low. “What happened?”

I wiped a finger down Griffin’s cold table, alongside the dull sword. Not a lick of dust. “I found the White Crow. He wasn’t so much a sorcerer as a Fae God.”

Griffin’s jaw tensed. “What the fuck.” “I had similar sentiments.”

“And what? He helped you?” “He stripped me of my lighte.”

My commander did not show emotion. Not even when his own parents had been hanged before him. But at my words, Griffin’s sea-green eyes practically churned. “Kane—”

“Not permanently.” I heard air flee him in relief. “If I touch the Blade of the Sun, I’ll be reborn as full-blooded Fae. I can take her place in the

prophecy and kill my father.”

“Another hunt for the blade.” Griffin sighed. “Why do I feel like we’ve done that one before?”

“We aren’t doing anything.” My eyes fell over his bland glass-fronted hutch and unlit hearth despite the autumn chill. “I’m leaving tonight for Willowridge. I’ll have Briar open the portal for me. Unless our magically challenged witch is fixed?”

Griffin made a face. “She’s still with Briar. The progress hasn’t been excellent…But I don’t really know. She doesn’t speak to me much these days.”

Any part of me that wanted to jest about his Mari problems withered with the look of true regret in his eyes. “How come?”

“She blames me. And you. For Arwen.”

My blood turned with the mention of her name. “You had nothing to do with…what happened that day.”

“I told her I knew about Hemlock. And that I let you both go alone. She has every right to hate me.”

Guilt slammed into me like a hammer across an anvil. I was the only person who had allowed Arwen to jump from that platform. I’d regret it every day of my now stunted, mortal life. Griffin didn’t deserve that same fate.

I opened my mouth to tell him as much, but his flat look told me he wasn’t interested in my pity. Changing course, I lilted, “When you say not excellent—”

“No substantial magic, last I heard.” “It’s been almost two months.”

Griffin’s jaw went rigid. “She’s terrified.” “Of what?”

“Failing everyone, I think,” he said, eyes on his knuckles, stretched white across his chairback.

“And what of the little seer’s father?”

It’d been a promise we’d made to Beth, the girl who could divine the future, back in Crag’s Hollow. To rescue her father, Vaughn, from Amber’s

clutches, if he was still alive.

“We found him, actually. He was being kept in the same encampment Halden and his men brought Arwen to, back in Peridot.”

Again with her name—ice shards against my heart. My fingers curled around the edge of the table.

“On her parents’ urging we brought Beth back to Shadowhold for her safety.” His mouth twisted into a knot. “She’s a little…”

“Yeah. Any visions?” “Nothing yet.”

The sun flecked through the half-moon-shaped window above the stony kitchen, turning the clean marble table between us into a glowing sprawl of light.

“You know I’m coming with you,” my commander said after a minute. “No, you’ll stay here. Ready the troops for war in case I fail.”

“In case you fail? You mean in case you, a mortal, are killed in Lumera?

You will be.”

“It’s nice to feel so supported.”

“I’m not fucking kidding, Kane.” A muscle feathered in Griffin’s jaw. “You should have six armies backing you. Or thirty.”

My blood simmered. “We don’t have six armies, do we? Unless there’s been any word from Citrine? Or the traitor?”

“Yeah,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. “A few things have transpired.”

I readied myself. “Wonderful news only, I’m sure.”

“Amber Kingdom is no longer stationed in Peridot. Amelia was reinstated as the rightful queen. She’s rebuilding Siren’s Bay, and sent you a letter saying her army won’t fight alongside us. I don’t think they’ll fight at all.”

“She sent a fucking letter?” If I had my lighte I might’ve obliterated Griffin’s spotless kitchen.

“She did.”

“Queen of the Peridot Provinces…” I hummed to myself. “Is Eryx furious? Usurped by his own daughter?” I could only imagine the look on

the vainglorious bastard’s face. “Eryx is dead.”

The already cool stone home dropped in temperature. Perhaps it was my new, mortal constitution, but I fought a shiver.

Amelia. Capable of deceit, betrayal, and now patricide. Some queen Peridot had earned.

“When our convoy arrived at Fedrik’s ship in Sandstone, to send the king to Citrine as we’d planned, Eryx was found poisoned in the back of the carriage.”

“And Citrine?”

“Broderick and Isolde think we tried to frame Fedrik for Eryx’s murder.

It’s…”

“Absurd,” I growled. “They’re imbeciles.”

“Maybe we sail there once more. See if begging on our hands and knees changes anything. I’m not above it.”

“Ha,” I said without humor. “We should find out.”

Griffin had been my closest friend since childhood. My only real friend, the past few decades. Not only that, but a loyal, self-sacrificing, and trustworthy commander of my army. He’d been there for me through everything. For Arwen, too.

And I knew it wasn’t fair to saddle him with this. I’d be leaving him with nothing. Worse than that—a legacy of loss and broken alliances. An unwinnable war on the horizon. But the people out there who had knelt before me—the people of this entire continent—they needed Griffin. They deserved a leader who was moral and steadfast. Who was good.

“You should find out. I’m going to Lumera. It’ll be your problem either way, Griffin. When I’m gone…I want you to take my place on the Onyx throne.”

“Don’t.” He sighed, lowering his head to rub his temples. “Don’t say that.”

“You’re the only one I trust.”

When Griffin’s gaze met mine, it was mournfully grim. “I have no interest in ruling a kingdom.”

My smile was faint. “That’s why you’ll be great at it.” “What if—”

“There are no what-ifs. I’m either going to succeed in finding the blade and kill my father, which will grant my death as well, or I’m going to die trying.”

“So, what…?” Griffin swallowed audibly, the barest hint of emotion flashing across his face. “You’re saying this is it?”

My gaze found the stony floor, safe from Griffin’s eyes. “Yeah. This is

it.”