Page 85 of Taken By Shadows

“Why do you want to know about my brother? My family is of no consequence to you. Hart won’t know to come here.”

“Why would he come here at all?”

Kaed’s gaze was heavy, and his jaw tightened. “I won’t let him take you. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Maybe I’d misheard the way he said those words. The declaration felt … compassionate. Not demanding. Possessive. Protective.

I swallowed my panic as best I could. “Why does everyone fear him coming here?”

Kaed scrunched his lips in deliberation. “Hart and I … have a uniquely difficult relationship that my father solidified for us.” He rubbed at the scar that graced his face, avoiding my gaze.

If Kaed insisted on keeping me as a pawn, I would at least know the game I was playing.

Kaed sighed again and, despite my earlier comments, pinched his nose bridge between two fingers. After a heavy pause in the air, he said, “My younger brother has always wanted my crown. And I’d have given it to him. Years before now. Before my father changed who we were as brothers.”

He wavered like he was about to tell me something else but stopped dead as though the words had been drowned.

“You don’t want it?” I tilted my head to one side.

His eyes held mine for a moment before he spoke. “I never really have. But I don’t want Hart to have it. That’s why I keep it. And my father ensured we would never be able to change that.” There was a whole world behind the facade Kaed had chosen to show me. Would I have thought any differently of him if he’d let his true title show the day we’d met? Hardly. Being a prince didn’t excuse him from his actions.

“What do you mean ensured?”

Kaed looked at me in the dark light of the night air spilling into the study. As his eyes lingered on me, the heat of their gaze warmed my blood. His chest rose and fell rhythmically as he held himself, restrained and stoic, before me. For a moment, I thought we might just sit together all night in the growing nightshade. Something about being around him was intoxicating enough to forget how I got here in the first place.

And it was going to ruin me.

I swallowed a rush of shivers that flowed through me.

Mentally undressing him should not be what ran through my mind as he spoke. And yet …

“Another time perhaps.”

I sagged with relief as he dismissed me and ended our conversation. I wasn’t sure I could hide the thoughts that were growing like wildflowers in my mind.

But I couldn’t leave on that note. On knowing he’d lost something vital with his brother. For whatever reason, it must not have been easy.

“That day. In the meadow. When you … found me … I was leaving.” I paused, unsure now why I was babbling. “I have … an unusual … relationship with my sister. It’s not cold because she doesn’t care. She does. We do, for each other.” Speaking more to myself, I didn’t lift my gaze to Kaed. “She isn’t trying to take my birthright from me—I don’t have one to take.” I looked at Kaed eventually as I tried to make light of that in some way. “But … she’s just everything I’m not. That’s why I was there that day. Alone.” I paused but didn’t look up. “I … I always knew something was missing, that I was different. It had ground down something deep inside me to dust, so I left. But now I’m not so sure that was right.” My voice had drifted to a whisper in the darkness.

Kaed had gone perfectly still in front of me. But then he crossed the room, closing the distance between us. “You only ever talk about leaving here. But you’d already left what you knew,” he eventually said. “Do you want nothing here?”

That elemental aura, the heat of him, waged war on the nerve endings of my skin as he stood beside me. “I suppose my perspective on what I wanted, or thought I needed, changed when my choices were taken away …”

I thought he might reach for me, but he pulled his hand back.

“You always have a choice, Imogen. They might not seem worthwhile, but there is always a choice.”

Our chests were just a few inches from each other now.

“You had a choice in the Cage. And you chose to free me. They’d have happily let me rot in there for a few years. Just to enjoy the spectacle. But you chose to free me.”

Years? They’d hold a prince that long? Could they even do that? Some part of me feared what power they had to withhold a prince from the Crown.

“I owed you that.” I swallowed against how dry my throat had suddenly gone.

“You think because I saved your life, you had to save mine?” His voice was soft, searching, but it was tipped with something sharp, a thorn that pained him.

Yes. I did.