Page 229 of The Crown’s Temptation

Something in his chest loosened. She was safer where she was than with him.

He was not certain he knew how to be a father. He had never needed to learn.

His thoughts wandered instead to the mountain then. The spring. The white veils. The little X carved into an ankle that matched the one on his own.

The girl had been Asharin. And somehow, before the Bloodhaven had taken its price, Nox had pointed him toward her anyway.

Find my sister. You will want her.

Whether she had remembered why or simply trusted whatever remained of the truth, he would never know.

He closed his hand around the memory stones.

He had promised a lonely little girl that he would help her remember.

He had failed. He would not fail her again.

He knew now that Nox had known it too, even if she no longer remembered why. That she had not intended to stop it. That she had trusted him with something she had not needed to put into words.

She had trusted him to protect Asharin.

Find my sister. You will want her.

The words would not stop repeating in his head.

He stood in the corridor of Kelsey Castle with the memory stones warm in his fist and the thing in his chest that had no name and let that settle into him completely.

Then another memory found him.

Aviaryn sitting beside him in the East Wing of Kelsey Castle while they read. Her defiance toward her mother at mealtime. The way she smiled with that missing tooth.

She had been his daughter this entire time.

A painful thought came over him.

She was illegitimate. In Veynar, that meant she would be veiled by law.

Our daughter will sit the Veynar throne.

He ran a hand through his hair.

It was not that simple, Ivanoxa.

He had promised Asharin that Fiorakis would inherit the throne.

Something heavy pressed into his chest.

He was better with children than Ivanoxa, perhaps. But the selfless affection humans spoke of so easily was not something he had ever possessed.

He sighed and went to find his horse.

The road to Veynar took him through three villages before the city came into view.

He rode with his hood up. Habit more than calculation. The morning was cold and clear and the road was busier than he expected for the hour.

He noticed the black before he understood it. It was everywhere. The banners along the road. The cloth at windows. The strips of dark fabric tied at doorways and fence posts and the wrists of children too young to understand what they wore and wearing it anyway because the adults around them did.

He slowed his horse.