Page 49 of The Cost of Blood and Bonds

“That’s why you looked so broken that night,” I breathe. “When I saw you in the alley. You’d just⁠—”

“Torn a family apart,” he says, his voice hollow. “Told two parents they could never see their children in the same room again. Watched two little boys cling to each other, sobbing, then be pulled apart forever.”

The weight of it settles over me. He carries this, all of this.

“How long have you been doing this? Who else knows?”

“Years, I don’t know, I’ve stopped counting.” He turns and fully faces me. “You’re the only person I’ve ever told. I almost told Grier once, years ago, but I couldn’t do it.”

“Why would you tell me?”

“I don’t know. I just felt the need to.” He shakes his head. “Because lying to you felt worse than telling you the truth.”

I stare at him. The man I thought I knew—the charming prince, the one who flirts too much and pushes too hard. But that’s not who’s standing in front of me. This is someone who carries the weight of every family he’s torn apart and never asks anyone to help him hold it. And something inside me, something I’ve been keeping locked down for months, cracks wide open.

I reach for his hand, and my fingers close around his.

“You risk everything for them, for kids you don’t even know.”

He goes still beneath my touch, and I take a step closer, close enough to feel the warmth radiating off his skin. His breath catches, and his eyes search my face.

“I do too.” The words slip out before I can pull them back. I should not be saying this. “The ones the nobles take, I get them out before they bring them to the King.”

His fingers tighten around mine. He’s looking at me like he’s just stopped being alone.

“You’re a rebel,” he says, with awe bleeding through his words.

The secret I want to tell him presses behind my ribs, but I shove it down. Instead, I nod and take the last step closer. His free hand lifts toward my face⁠—

“Ryewood?” Grier’s voice carries from somewhere beyond the hedge, and we both pull back.

Grier appears around the corner, and his eyes flick between us.

“The King is asking for you,” he says.

Ryewood turns back to me, with everything unfinished between us, before he walks toward Grier. Grier gives me a knowing look before he turns and walks away.

I don’t know how long I stand there, with the sea crashing far below and nothing but the unmoving fog staring back at me. The feelings I’ve been pushing down for months surge up all at once, impossible to dismiss. He destroys himself to save them, and he told me. Only me.

How am I supposed to keep him at a distance when everything in me is pulling me closer? But closer means he sees more. And there are things about me he can never see.

I let that truth settle into my chest and hollow me out, because it’s the only option I have. I can’t have them both. We’ve been one my whole life. I’ll always choose her.

Chapter 16

Grier

“Lord Davrik will want assurances tonight,” the King says, leaning back in his chair. “That the trials will proceed as planned. That his bloodline will be protected.”

Voss nods, ever the lapdog. Hayes and Rye keep their faces blank.

Late afternoon light filters through the library’s eastern wall, a curved extension of the atrium’s glass dome, casting long shadows through the treetops across the table.

“Assurances create stability,” the King says as he draws a slow breath in through his nose. “Stability keeps them loyal.”

I’ve sat through enough of these meetings to know who gets assurances and who gets nothing, and the commoners never come out on top.

“How is training with the swordmaster progressing?” The King turns to me.