Cyrene fell to her knees at Dean’s shoulder and hastily cradled his head in her hands. She held him against her and fought back the tears and confusion.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Kael wasn’t supposed to win.

And she knew…he had definitely won.

He was letting her go, but there was a price. And she was terrified to find out what that price was. Terrified to wake up one day and discover that he was right, that everything that had happened was her fault. She hated that Kael was inside her head, but he was.

And worse…his magic had gotten inside her head. He was the rightful Dremylon heir. Which meant, as the Braj had told her all those weeks ago, that the Braj and Indres had been sent by Kael to kill her. He had been trying to kill her for months. And that contradicted everything else Kael had done since she had met him.

Kael was the one who had warned her not to leave the palace grounds in Byern when the killer was on the loose. He had been furious when he found out that she was gone. He had helped find her when she had gone missing in Albion, even after she had knocked him out with a silver candelabra. He had even made sure that he walked with her to the library, so she would be safe. Then, he’d trekked across Aurum to collect her.

He had been irritating, persistent, and antagonistic from the start but not evil. She had never thought he was out to kill her. And, now, he was just letting her go. How can I reconcile the man that had tried to save me with the man who had supposedly tried to kill me?

Her head swam, as if she were trapped under Kael’s spell all over again.

“How are you doing?” she asked Dean.

“Hurts like a bitch.”

She bit out a laugh and motioned for Avoca to hurry over. “I’m so sorry about this, Dean.”

“You didn’t ask me to fight him. I thought I had him,” he admitted. “I’ll get him next time.”

“No next time, please. I just want to see you healthy again.”

“I can fix this,” Avoca assured her. “Ceis’f would be better, but I don’t know if he will…”

Dean groaned. “It’s nothing. Just…help me up.”

“Dean.”

“Just help me up. We have to get out of here. Unless you’ve changed your mind, and you’d like to go back after your Prince.”

Cyrene shook her head. “I’m here with the right prince.”

He grinned. “That’s what I like to hear.”

They hoisted him up off the ground, and through a string of curses, he walked onto the ship. Cyrene followed close behind, worried about what would happen to him.

“Ceis’f,” she said, dragging him toward her. “Would you heal him? Please.”

He stared at her, as if she were insane.

“Please. I know you hate humans. You hate us all. You want to exterminate our race, and the only reason you’re here is to protect Avoca. But I say this as her friend. She cares for you but not like this. You are bitter and angry. Maybe you have every right to be—”

“I do,” he spat.

She held her hands up. “I believe you. But…please.”

He ground his teeth and then shoved past her. “You owe me for this.”

She nodded. She knew that. She owed a lot of people for this. She owed everyone.

Ceis’f followed them down stairs and into a room where Dean was carefully deposited on a bed. Once inside, Ceis’f ushered everyone else out, closed the door, and refused to let anyone inside.

Cyrene hurried back out onto the deck just as the Eleysian vessel cast off from the dock. If she squinted hard enough, she could almost see Kael’s retreating form on the horizon. She had to be imagining it. But something yanked at her, called to her, pulled her back toward the shore. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the sight.

Ahlvie clamped a hand down on her wrist, dragging her from her thoughts. “It’s not your fault,” he said.

“What?” she croaked.

“What happened back there is not your fault.”

She hung her head.

“I don’t know about that,” she whispered.

“Well, I do. I don’t understand Kael’s actions though. He won, yet he yielded. That doesn’t sound like him.”

“No, it doesn’t,” she breathed.

“I’ve fought him before, you know. He’s never looked that good,” Ahlvie said. “Kael cared more for flirting than swordplay. Unless he’s been doing something no one else knew about, he’s improved immensely in a very short time.”

Cyrene nodded. “Yeah.”

“Are you going to tell me what it is?”

Something like magic.

Cyrene kept silent.

Ahlvie sighed heavily. “I can accept that you have magic, but you can’t trust me with this thing with Kael.”

“I don’t know. All right? I don’t know anything about Kael. I just had a crazy night. My mind is all fuzzy, and Dean is injured. Kael said that he would let me go, but I’d come back to him, and then everything that happened would be my fault. I don’t know what any of that means, Ahlvie. So, maybe I just want to think through it all.”

“Okay,” he said softly. “It’s been a stressful night all around.” He looked off pensively toward the ocean.

She thought she saw his eyes flash yellow for a second, but when she looked more closely, it was gone.

“Are you all right?” she asked him.

“I’ve been better. We all have.”

Then, Ahlvie pulled her against him. Tears sprang from her eyes and soaked into his shirt. She hated herself for crying, but all she could do was wait and think and worry. Things she was not any good at.

When Avoca let Cyrene know that it would be awhile before they had news about Dean, Cyrene was taken to the captain’s quarters by Darmian where she managed to finally fall into a fitful slumber. He had offered up his accommodations for her on account of her being a special guest of the Prince. She was too tired to even argue how that might come across.

A few hours later, she stumbled out of bed to find a fresh change of clothes lying on a chair. Her heart skipped a beat in panic. She circled the room in desperation.

Where is my dress? Oh no!

The Book of the Doma and the Presenting letter were stashed in a hidden pocket she had sewn into the folds of the full skirt. This couldn’t be happening. She had spent all that time making sure that, even if they were separated from their belongings, her book would always be with her. And, now, it was gone!

She searched the room high and low. She had left the dress on the floor next to the bed last night before she had fallen asleep in nothing but an oversize shirt someone had offered her. Now, it was missing.

With a frantic pitter-patter of her heart, she stepped into the fresh change of clothes from the chair and darted out of the cabin. She raced toward the stairs that would take her up to the deck, but right before she got there, a body stepped out of the bedroom.

“You’re in a hurry.”

“Dean!” Cyrene cried. She threw her arms around him without a second thought. She was just so happy to see him alive.

“Ugh!” he groaned as she collided with him.

“Oh Creator, I’m sorry.” She hastily stepped back, embarrassed.

She was elated to see him whole and healthy. He had a sling holding one arm up, but as far as she could tell, his shoulder looked repaired.

“How are you?”

“Your friend patched me up as best as he could. It seems Prince Kael tore through some pretty important parts of my shoulder, and even magic couldn’t fully heal the wound. Going to have to just let it rest like normal, I suppose.”

Cyrene recoiled at the use of the word magic. He used it so flippantly, as if he had always known of its existence. As if it didn’t matter that it existed at all.

“You speak very freely of magic.”

Dean grinned. “Eleysians don’t fear it like Aurumians or pretend like it doesn’t exist, like the citizens of Byern. We remember the old ways even if the only magic we see comes from the fights against the demon spawn, such as that Braj we saw in the palace. They don’t cross to the capital city, but we see them enough in the rest of the country.”

“So…Eleysia believes that magic exists.”

“Of course it exists. It is everywhere in everything. We just have lost the ability to tap into it.”

“I see,” she breathed.

No wonder he had been so accepting of her magic from the start. Coming from a world that always believed in it would have been such an advantage. Instead…she’d been born in Byern.

“Speaking of,” he said, “the laundress came by your room and returned with this.”

He held out the cracked leather book that she had grown so accustomed to, and all the breath left her lungs. She reverently took it between her hands.

“Thank you.”

“That book is very old for it to be blank.”

Cyrene’s head snapped up. “You opened it?” she demanded.

His cheeks colored a rosy red. “I didn’t mean any offense. I wasn’t trying to pry.”

She tucked it away, realizing that she had already made too big of a deal out of it. “Thank you again for everything.”

“I think it was all worth it to see you in an Eleysian gown.” His eyes ran down the length of her dress.

Cyrene flushed at the words. She hadn’t even paid attention to what she put on before rushing out of the room. But now she took note of how well made the dress was. It was of the thinnest, finest Eleysian silk. Featherlight so that it was almost sheer and slimming in all the right places in the softest Eleysian purple.

“Why did you have this on board?” she asked, deflecting the compliment.

“Eleven sisters, remember?”

“Right. I forgot. What exactly was it like, growing up with eleven sisters?” she asked.

He offered her his good arm, and she looped her hand around his elbow.

“Terrifying,” he admitted with a laugh. “Eleven older sisters, mind you.”

Cyrene shook her head in disbelief. She had thought that she had a large family with two sisters and a brother. She couldn’t even fathom a family of twelve. Let alone a royal family with that many.

“Why did your parents continue to have so many children?” she asked as they walked up the stairs to the main deck.

“How much do you know about Eleysia?”

“Considering my questions about magic just now?”

“Good point.”

She sighed. “And, if my journey thus far is any indication, the things I know about Eleysia are probably not accurate.”

Dean laughed and angled them toward the railing. “Well, if what I’ve heard of Byern is true, you wouldn’t even be able to carry on a successful conversation without trying to convert me to your Class system.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“Yet to be determined,” he said with a smirk. “Anyway, you’re probably aware that Eleysia is, in fact, a queendom.”

Cyrene nodded. She had heard that in her lessons. She had always thought it sounded like a fairy tale for the Queen to rule. A nightmare in Byern, where Queen Kaliana was a devil. But she had envisioned a benevolent queen as a ruler. Someone like the Leif Queen Shira.

“My mother, Queen Cassia, always wanted a girl, of course. Someone to rule the queendom after she and King Tomas were no longer around. They were lucky to have my sister, Princess Brigette, first. And then, after a while, the running joke became that they couldn’t have a son. My mother really wanted a son.” Dean shrugged. “So, they kept trying until they had one.”

Cyrene felt a laugh bubble out of her, and it felt so good to just relax after the stress of the last couple of weeks. They were on the royal ship bound for Eleysia with the Prince as an escort. She had survived Kael…if barely. She couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to what he had said. But at least she was free of him. For now.

“Seems to have worked out for them,” Cyrene told Dean.

“Yes. I’m fortunate to have parents who love me very much.”

“Me, too. Though I haven’t seen my parents in some time. Not since I made Affiliate.” Speaking about her home made her heart contract. She hadn’t been able to tell anyone she was an Affiliate since she had left.

“You leave home for Affiliate training, as far as I know, correct?”

“Yes. You move into the castle and work with your Receiver.”

“And what was your area of expertise?”

Cyrene snorted. “Expertise is a stretch. I wasn’t there that long before I left, and the Queen…well, let’s just say we weren’t on great terms.”

“I met Queen Kaliana. She…left something to be desired,” he said.

“That’s one way to put that she’s a conniving bitch.”

Dean’s laugh boomed over the bow of the ship. When he looked back at her for a second, his eyes glittered in the early morning light, and she had to take a deep breath. His smile brightened his entire face. Everything changed about him. His features smoothed. His eyes lit up. His body eased. She could just stare up into that face all day.

For a second, when they stared at each other, she forgot that she was a refugee, fleeing Byern to discover her magic, and he was the Prince of a foreign land. They were just two individuals on separate paths that had converged at just the right point. And though she hardly knew him at all, she found herself at ease with him.

His eyes stuttered to her lips and then back. He seemed to realize his error and looked back out at the ocean beyond. She swallowed and was glad that she wasn’t the only one effected.

“How much longer?” she whispered, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him against the rail.

“We should arrive by nightfall. It’s only a day trip from Aurum.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. “Good.”

“You don’t like the sea?”

“No. I do. I’m just anxious to be there.”

He questioningly raised an eyebrow, and she thought he was going to ask her about why she had left, but the words never came.

“Stay with me,” he said instead.

“What do you mean?” she asked cautiously.

“In the palace. We have plenty of room, and I’d love to get to know you.”

“And you can’t do that if I’m staying elsewhere?” she asked. She knew she was playing hard to get, but in reality, her heart was racing away from her. She hadn’t expected a direct invitation to the palace or to have more time with Dean. A thought she was relishing at the moment.

“You know I would come see you every day regardless of where you stayed in my homeland,” he said with a bright smile, “but I’d prefer if I could show it to you from my home.”

Even though every inch of her was screaming to say yes, she forced herself to consider the offer before jumping into something. “I’ll think about it.”