Xander was crushed.
Rafe set aside his own panic and kicked off the wall, trying to put a grin to his lips even as nausea continued to coil in his stomach. “That was a bit dramatic, don’t you think?”
Head snapping up at this, Xander fumed. “She has every right to react however she pleases after what we did to her.”
“I wasn’t talking about her. I was talking about you,” Rafe retorted before pointedly looking at the gnarled glove by his feet. “I think the poor girl thought you tore your own hand off. What happened to using your words?”
Xander frowned. “I— I’m not sure.”
But Rafe knew. Everyone in that room knew. Even Xander, whether he would admit it to himself or not. The same insecurity had plagued him all his life—the idea that his disability made him somehow less of a man, less of a prince. Rafe wanted to grab his brother and shake him, but he didn’t think that would help. Instead, he walked across the room and draped an arm over Xander’s shoulder.
“Give her time,” he said. “She’s been lied to, she probably feels a bit betrayed, and more than anything, she probably feels scared—scared to be mated, scared to leave the only life she’s ever known, scared to move to a foreign world she’s never seen before. This isn’t about you, not really. Give her time to adjust and then you’ll see, she’ll open her heart to you.”
“Rafe is right,” Helen added softly. “We knew this plan was risky from the start, but it doesn’t sound like she plans to betray us to her king. We should look on the bright side. In two days, we’ll be home. Our people’s faith will be restored. And you’ll have the rest of your life to make it up to your mate.”
Xander grunted, his expression still haunted. After a moment, he slinked out of Rafe’s embrace and pumped his wings, racing toward his room. Rafe moved to follow, but a hand on his arm stopped him cold.
“Leave us,” Queen Mariam murmured darkly.
At first, Rafe thought she was talking to him, but then he saw Helen slip out, returning to the rest of the guards at her command, and he knew he wasn’t so lucky.
“What—”
“Silence,” she cut him off, voice as sharp as ever—as though she’d been forged in a smithy, not grown in a womb. Her eyes glinted like the polished iron of a blade about to strike. No matter how old he grew or how many dragons he faced, the queen would remain the most terrifying of sights. “I will not have my son fooled the way my mate fooled me.”
Rafe swallowed, trying to clear his throat as a drop of dread slid through it. His voice was hoarse as he answered, “I don’t know what you mean.”
The queen laughed, a sound that was anything but amused. “I don’t care what happened between you and the daughter of Aethios to make her defy the orders of her king and pick my son as a mate, but whatever it was, it ends now.”
Rafe opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.
The silence said more than his words ever could.
Queen Mariam tightened her grip on his arm and leaned toward him. “You will not speak to her in the absence of my son. You will not visit her rooms. You will not try to ease her worries or her fears. You will not make her believe she is special. You will harden your heart to her, or I will do what I should have done years ago and remove you from my kingdom. Do I make myself clear?”
Rafe nodded slowly. “Crystal.”
“Good.”
The queen snatched her hand away, curling her lip as though touching him had left a distasteful smell in the air, and smoothed the folds of her dress before leaving. Rafe clenched his fists until his whole body began to shake. Only when the clicking of her heels faded did he release his tension to fall back against the nearest wall, painfully crushing his wings.
The queen was right.
This was Rafe’s fault.
Rafe’s mess.
And he had to fix it.
Xander thought the princess was upset because he was somehow less than she’d expected, but he was wrong. This had nothing to do with his hand. Nothing to do with him. Nothing even to do with Rafe. Ana—
Lyana, he corrected. Not Ana. Never Ana again.
Princess Lyana Aethionus.
His brother’s mate.
His brother’s queen.
What was it she’d said to him on the dance floor?
Call me crazy, she’d murmured as he twirled her inside the curtain of his wings, but I thought maybe you’d be excited, like I was, when you discovered there’d be a princess at the trials who already knew your deepest secret, a person from whom you didn’t have to hide.
That was all she had wanted, all that had propelled her actions. Not a desire for Rafe, but a desire for what she thought he offered—freedom. Maybe he could show her that Xander offered the same thing. That Xander would accept her for who she was. That Xander was a better man than he could ever hope to be, a better man for her. Maybe then she’d forget about a few stolen moments in the dark. She’d forget about him.
The very idea stole the breath from his lungs.
But Rafe would do it.
He had to.
30
Lyana
With Cassi’s help, Lyana successfully avoided the ravens for the rest of the evening, hiding in her room, getting her meal delivered, spending the night staring at the crystal palace that had never seemed so far away, and waking bleary-eyed and run down the next morning.
“You can’t greet your parents looking like that,” Cassi said after taking one glance at Lyana. “They’ll know something’s up.”
Though she couldn’t see herself, Lyana had no doubt her eyes were red and puffy, and that the normal cheer was gone from her face. She sighed. “I know.”
“Well, come here. Let me see what I can do,” Cassi grumbled, slipping on her glasses for the attention to detail required by the task. Lyana spun, granting her friend full rein. Immediately, nimble fingers began shifting through her head, folding and twisting her many braids into a perfectly royal crown of hair.
“This can’t all be about a man,” her friend said as she worked. “That’s not the Ana I know.”
“It’s not. It’s—” The words caught in Lyana's throat.
It’s not about a man, she told herself. It’s not.
But maybe it was…a little.
Watching him turn and face that dragon had been the bravest thing she’d ever seen. And their two magics dancing beneath his skin had felt deeper than any kiss she’d ever experienced. And when she’d dropped the edge of her knife from his neck, she’d given him more than her trust in his promise to keep her secret. She’d given him a piece of her heart as well.
A piece he’d crushed.
Now the two of them would be bound by a secret no one could ever know, not even her mate. Which meant this man, whose name she still didn’t know, would have his claws in her forever.
“It’s not about a man,” Lyana repeated, more gruffly this time. Cassi yanked a little too hard on her hair, a silent protest that elicited a hiss of pain, but nothing else. “It’s about my life.”
Cassi sighed theatrically. “It’s so tough being a princess.”