Chapter Four: The Price of a Crown

Nobody moved for a long moment.

Rhys's whole body had shifted into something coiled and dangerous, a wall between me and the doorway before I'd even registered him standing. "You have exactly one reason not to be thrown off this land right now," he said. "Talk fast."

Kaelan's eyes found mine over Rhys's shoulder, and for once there was no arrogance in them at all. Just exhaustion, and something rawer underneath it.

"My father isn't doing this to protect the kingdom," he said. "He's doing it because a fully severed bond would let him arrange a political marriage for me before the Draveths can use my weakened power as an excuse to challenge the throne. Ivy isn't a problem to him. She's an inconvenience standing between him and a treaty he's already negotiating."

"And you know this because?" Rhys's voice was ice.

"Because I overheard him say it." Kaelan's throat worked. "Word for word. 'The girl was never the point. She's a loose thread.' That's what he called you, Ivy. A loose thread to be cut before the wedding announcement."

The room tilted slightly. I gripped the edge of Rhys's desk.

"Wedding," I repeated. "You're getting married."

"I don't want" Kaelan stopped himself, jaw working. "It doesn't matter what I want. It matters what happens to you if I don't find a way to stop this in thirty days."

"So you came here to warn me," I said slowly, "or to convince me to let you drag me back so you can play the hero?"

"I came," he said, and something in his voice finally cracked open, raw and unguarded in a way I'd never once heard from him, "because I've spent three weeks watching myself get weaker every single day, and some small, pathetic part of me was almost grateful for it. Because it meant I couldn't stop thinking about you even if I wanted to. And I don't know what to do with that except show up and try to fix what I broke."

Silence.

Rhys hadn't moved, but something in his stance had changed less a wall now, more a man recalculating.

"That's a very pretty speech," I said finally, "for someone who called me fatass in front of two hundred people."

Kaelan flinched as I'd struck him. Good.

"I know," he said quietly. "I have no defence for it. I was a coward, and I let my father's approval matter more than a person standing in front of me who deserved better. I'm not asking you to forgive that. I'm asking you to let me help stop what's coming, because whatever you decide to do with your life afterwards with him, without either of us, whatever you want, you deserve the chance to decide it. Not have it decided for you in a cell."

I looked between the two of them Rhys, steady and furious on my behalf without a single selfish motive I could find in his scent; Kaelan, unravelling in real time, finally saying the things I'd wanted to hear three weeks too late.

The bond pulsed, warm and insistent, whenever my eyes landed on Kaelan. It didn't do that with Rhys. But warmth wasn't the same as safety, and I was done confusing the two.

"Thirty days," I said. "What happens if we don't stop it?"

Kaelan's expression answered before his words did. "Then in thirty days, royal guards come for you whether Rhys agrees to it or not, and I'll have already been announced to Lady Serrin Draveth in a treaty marriage designed to end the succession dispute permanently."

I went very still.

"Draveth," I repeated. "You're marrying into the family trying to overthrow your own father?"

"It's supposed to unify the claims," Kaelan said grimly. "Peace through blood ties. Except..."

"Except what?" Rhys asked sharply when Kaelan hesitated.

Kaelan's eyes flicked to me, something unreadable moving behind them.

"Except I don't think Serrin Draveth wants peace," he said. "I think she wants the throne. And I think the moment that marriage is finalised, my father is going to find out exactly how badly he miscalculated right before it's too late to stop her."