Cyrene paced back and forth in front of the wooden door. It was the night before Elea’s Presenting, nearly a week since the attack at her Investiture, and as consort, she was completing her final duty before the ceremony. Though she technically didn’t have to be standing here at this door in the castle at this precise moment, she was too anxious not to.

She held in her hand a folded piece of paper that she’d had on her person since her own Presenting ceremony a year ago. Her eyes narrowed on the riddle.

WHAT YOU SEEK LIES WHERE YOU CANNOT SEEK IT.

WHAT YOU FIND CANNOT BE FOUND.

THE THING YOU DESIRE ABOVE ALL ELSE RISKS ALL ELSE.

THE THING YOU FIGHT FOR CANNOT BE WON.

WHEN ALL SEEMS LOST, WHAT WAS LOST CAN BE FOUND.

WHEN ALL BEND, YOU CANNOT BE AS YOU WERE.

Nonsense. She still believed it to be so. Even though she knew the Circadian Prophecy existed and that this was somehow part of that prophecy. She suspected the first two lines were about her magic. The second two lines, she hated to believe were about love. But the last two lines, she had no clue. Still, a year later, she knew nothing. Didn’t even know if her ideas regarding it were right.

And, as the door swung open, she took a deep breath. Today, she wanted answers.

A stooped and withered old man stood in the doorway. His hair was shot through with white, and he leaned on a cane. “Can I help you?” the man asked her.

“Yes,” she said, recovering her voice. “My name is Cyrene. I am the new consort. I have come to collect the Presenting letter.”

The man’s bushy eyebrows moved together. “I usually dispatch it to a guard.”

“I understand. Since I’m new to the role, I wanted to come meet you in person. What is your name?”

The man looked at her, flabbergasted, as he handed over the letter. “Owel is my name, miss. I hope you don’t mind me saying, but I have been writing these letters for a long time, and I’ve never had anyone try to meet me.”

Cyrene tucked the letter into the pocket of her gown. “I know this might not be typical, but I wanted to meet you. I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time.”

“I…don’t understand.”

“About my Presenting letter.”

Owel’s features deepened further. “I just write the letters, miss.”

“Yes, but mine is…well, it’s unusual.” She thrust the piece of paper out toward him.

He took it in shaky hands and opened it. He read it through and shook his head, his eyes bulging. “Where did you get this?”

“Like I said, it’s from my Presenting.”

“I see here that it’s my handwriting. So, I must have written it, but I can’t recall ever writing it.”

Cyrene’s heart deflated. “Truly?”

He passed it back to her. “You’re the consort. You know that the letters prepare you for your Presenting and help you decide what you want to accomplish in your time in residency. Miss, this letter doesn’t tell you any of that. If I’ve done wrong, I apologize.”

“No, no,” Cyrene said quickly, stuffing the letter out of the way. “You’ve done nothing wrong. It was clearly a misunderstanding.”

Cyrene hurried off. Her heart was hammering, her magic sparking under her fingertips. All of that time, she had put so much stock in the writer of this prophecy…these silly words. But the man didn’t even remember writing them. If he were a seer, then he certainly didn’t know it. That had been a waste of time. Another stupid dead end.

She was in such a hurry that she ran smack into Kael as she rounded the corner. Their magic collided with a fury, shaking the floor and sending them both toppling to the ground. Cyrene tried to rein it in, but this new magic, this blood magic, fought her, as if it had a mind of its own. Kael touched her again, and she cried out, as it felt like an earthquake was about to hit the castle.

Cyrene scrambled away from him. She held her hands out in front of her. “Don’t touch me.”

Kael appeared wounded for a moment and then schooled his features. “What are you doing out in these parts?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“I didn’t come here to fight with you again,” Kael said, rising to his feet.

He held out his hand to help her up, but she ignored it.

Cyrene bared her teeth at him and stood on her own.

When Kael had come to visit her as she was recovering this week, she had completely blown a gasket. She had needed him when she was at her most vulnerable, and he hadn’t been there. No one had. Alone. Again. She hadn’t wanted to hear his excuses and had nearly shoved him through several feet of stone wall to get him away from her. He hadn’t approached her since.

“Then, leave me be.”

“I can’t,” Kael said, his voice almost pleading with her. “You know I can’t.”

“You had no problem abandoning me when your brother was dying.”

“I was righting the throne room. I had no idea that you were in harm’s way. I had no idea that Edric had even ventured into the battle. Your safety is and has always been my first priority.”

Cyrene hated how hurt she felt that she didn’t believe him. No matter that he had been her enemy for so long, something had shifted between them in the past couple of weeks. Their last week of training together, they had almost seemed like…friends. She had almost let him crack open her black heart to see what it could be like to feel again.

“I don’t know that. I don’t know anything about you, Kael. How you got your magic, how you access it, how you are so good at it, what your true feelings are for me—”

“Don’t,” he ground out, taking the first step toward her.

Cyrene matched him, pacing backward. “What you want from me, what you expect out of all of this, what your end game is—”

“You are merely fooling yourself if you don’t know the answers to your questions.”

He took another step and boxed her back against the stone wall. Her magic hummed uncontrollably through her veins. Their connection intensified, like a lightning bolt sizzling through everything it touched.

“You tell me nothing.”

“My end game is you. I want you. I have always wanted you.” He tilted her chin up to meet his smoldering gaze. “Tell me you want me, too.”

“I…no, I…” Cyrene said, hardly able to breathe with him touching her.

“Tell me I am not completely misguided.”

Her heart cracked wide open at the blatant devotion in his eyes. At that feeling of being wanted, needed, for exactly who she was at that very moment. Despite the death and chaos and constant consequences of all of her actions…despite the blood magic, he was still here, asking her to give him her heart.

“You’re not,” she whispered. She was finally admitting to that darkened piece of herself that connected to him, that yearned for him.

He responded by pressing his lips to her mouth. For a second, she fought him. She didn’t know if she was ready for this. This step. But then her fingers were clutching on to the front of his shirt, dragging him closer. A shock wave seemed to explode out of them at the mere brush of his lips on hers. She had no idea what the repercussion of that magic would be, but her mind settled into blissful silence.

His hands slipped around her waist, practiced and fluid, splaying them flat and caressing up the curve of her dress. His thumbs traced her ribs, lightly touching under her breasts. His body pressed tight against hers.

It was like bursts exploding in the night sky on a holiday. Chocolate and pretty dresses and adventure, all rolled up into one perfect kiss. One kiss that had been building and growing endlessly.

She didn’t know if it was her magic responding to his or just this solitary feeling that she couldn’t escape, as if she had been lost and was suddenly being found.

By someone who knew her better than she possibly even knew herself.

Who didn’t step back from her magic but embraced it. Pushed it to its limits. Ached for more.

Her fingers threaded up into his hair as she opened her mouth to him. Their tongues pressed against one another. The heated passion in the moment was unbroken by the knowledge that there was so much wrong about this. Yet she wanted it. Some part of her desperately wanted this.

It was only steps coming down the hallway that finally made Cyrene break away. She looked up into Kael’s flushed and hungry face, only to turn and see Elea’s shocked face staring back at them. Her eyes were wide, and she stared between Cyrene and Kael with stark horror. Then, without a word, she turned and sprinted away from them.

“Elea!” Cyrene called.

She stepped forward to try to go after her, but Kael caught her hand.

“Don’t.”

“She’s my sister.”

“She needs some time,” Kael explained.

“No, she needs to know the truth.”

“Which is what?” He pulled her back toward him and brushed the dark curls from her face. “What she saw was the truth.”

“I…I don’t…” Cyrene had no idea what to say. She had seen Elea’s shock and the look of betrayal on her face. “She has a crush on you.”

“A little thing born out of a bit of kindness. She’ll be fine.”

Cyrene sighed. She wanted him to be right, but a nagging part of her told her it was not fine. And Elea would not be all right.

The feeling followed her all through the next day as she prepared for her first official Presenting. Elea hadn’t spoken to her since she saw her kissing Kael.

Creator, I kissed Kael.

But that was beside the point!

Today was her little sister’s Presenting, and though Cyrene didn’t care for the ceremony any longer because of the significance it held to the destruction of the Doma, she understood why it was important to Elea. She wanted to be there for her, but Elea had rebuffed any of her attempts to talk to her. Three days ago, they had buried their parents, and Elea would not speak a word to her because of one kiss. Now, the ceremony was about to begin, and she hadn’t even been able to wish her good luck. Let alone give her a birthday present.

Consort duties held her in the receiving chamber outside the largest ballroom. Repairs still needed to be made to the throne room, so they’d had to move the Presenting. Edric and Kaliana were both waiting impatiently with her. Childbirth had been strenuous and difficult for Kaliana’s delicate frame after all her miscarriages, and though she looked pale and ghastly, she was no longer on her deathbed. Cyrene wondered what she thought about the conversation they’d had. If she regretted it.

Edric anxiously paced the room. He clutched at his side every now and again, as if he could sense the wound underneath. His injuries weren’t healing quite as well as everyone had hoped but well enough for him to prowl the chamber like a caged animal. Though he remembered nothing of her saving his life. It was likely better for everyone that those memories were safely tucked away.

“Where is he?” Edric growled in frustration.

Cyrene didn’t respond. She busied herself, adjusting the new red dress she’d had commissioned for the occasion. Edric’s ruby-red necklace hung at her throat, and even though the servants had wanted to pin her hair up, she’d insisted on leaving it down in tendrils. She certainly looked the stark contrast to Kaliana with her severe blonde bun.

“He’ll be here,” Kaliana said. Her eyes darted to Cyrene as if to say, This is your job.

“Yes, he will. He won’t miss this,” Cyrene said.

And then he did arrive. Late, of course, but still here.

Cyrene took a breath at Kael’s entrance. He looked refined in his all black attire. His back straight, shoulders back, ready and willing to take on the world.

She hadn’t seen him since last night when Elea found them together. He’d wanted them to retreat to his rooms, but she’d insisted that she needed a good night’s sleep. When he caught her attention, his smoldering eyes said he had been thinking of nothing but that kiss since they parted.

She hitched a hasty breath and averted her gaze.

This was the first time that she had been in a room with both Dremylon boys since her Investiture, and with a gasp, she realized that she felt nothing from her bond with Edric. She actually tried to push aside the blazing magic that poured from Kael to her and could sense nothing. Not a thing.

It was as if the bond itself was…broken.

Her head swam. That wasn’t even possible.

Nothing could break a binding spell.

Matilde and Vera had told her as much.

They themselves had been trying to do it for near on two thousand years and had been unsuccessful.

How could I have possibly done something like that? Unknowingly!

“What?” Kael asked, at her side at once. “What is it?”

“It’s…nothing,” she said. She shook her head and swallowed hard.

Kael gave her a questioning look, but it was Edric’s narrowed eyes at Kael’s hand on her lower back that made her falter. She stepped out of Kael’s touch with her head held high.

But Cyrene had no time to think on what it could mean that she no longer felt anything for Edric. The Presenting had begun. She proceeded into the ballroom where she took her place at Edric’s side as consort for the first time. It was hard to believe, only a week ago, she had been named consort in truth. This moment felt utterly surreal.

Her sister swept into the room like a vision in Dremylon green. A bold choice to be sure, to wear a royal color for the ceremony. But green always was her color, and it suited her. She looked so much older than Cyrene could even imagine. Seventeen today, and Cyrene hadn’t even been able to give her a birthday present.

Elea breezed through the program much faster than Cyrene had. Cyrene had stumbled and teased Edric and done everything wrong. She should have been cast aside for her failure, yet she was sitting before everyone today in the highest station that was not royal. And she wished she could give it all up.

Edric announced that they had to deliberate, and Elea retreated back down the aisle. Her time had come and gone so quickly. It felt like hardly a moment had passed, and already, they were back in the receiving room, staring down at all the paperwork they had collected about Elea. Years of tutor notes, proficiency tests, signed forms for etiquette training, and more. All this work, and her parents couldn’t even be here today to see Elea in her final achievement.

They’d buried them three days prior. Her oldest sister, Aralyn, hadn’t made it back from Kell where she was an Ambassador. Cyrene knew that Elea must have been disappointed that Aralyn couldn’t come to her Presenting either. Especially with all the loss in their lives.

“Well, we all know what Cyrene is going to say,” Kaliana said with bite in her voice.

“Move her,” Cyrene said.

“What?” Kaliana snapped.

“I think court would eat her alive.”

“You’re actually suggesting not making your sister First Class?” Edric asked in disbelief.

Cyrene swallowed hard and made the argument she had settled on while planning. She hated doing it, but it had to be done. “Yes. She’s emotional and unreasonable. With the death of our parents, I believe she is spiraling into depression. I know that more of the same would stabilize her, but we have to think of court. Only the best are made Affiliates.”

“You don’t want your family to be kept safe here in the castle?” Edric asked.

She nearly scoffed. He meant trapped.

“I want what is best for the kingdom. After all, that is the point of the Class system.”

Edric blankly stared back at her. Kaliana looked disturbed. She clearly didn’t believe her. Cyrene didn’t care. As long as she could get Edric on her side.

“All right,” he said, pushing the papers together, “if that’s what you think. You know your sister best.”

Cyrene breathed a sigh of relief. “I do.”

They sauntered back out to the room. Kael shot her an inquisitive look, as if he could sense her unease through their bond. She grinned at him and then hastily took her seat. Elea returned to the front of the room. Cyrene could tell that Elea had her stomach in her throat and was shot through with nerves. She hated that she was about to dash Elea’s dreams. After Elea seeing Cyrene with Kael, she knew that she should have done something to brighten her sister’s spirits. She just couldn’t let her suffer in this life, too. She wasn’t safe here. No matter what Edric had said.

Edric moved before Elea, and Cyrene took a breath.

“It has been decided that you will be selected into the Guardian First Class.”

Cyrene’s jaw dropped. What?

Her head snapped to Kaliana, who looked smug.

The queen’s eyes said, You should have known better.

Cyrene wanted to demand answers, but clearly, now was not the time.

“Your Receiver will be Queen Kaliana,” Edric continued. “And, from this day forth, you shall be known as the queen’s Affiliate.”