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“After the Choosing, Lex went missing, and when he came back, he was… hurt, but nowhere anyone could see.” I paused to give him a chance to tell me. “The guards said you went looking for him.” He stilled. “My uncle took him somewhere and…” My voice lowered to a whisper. “What did he do to him, Az? For fuck’s sake. For once, treat me like the adult I am and not the scared kid you fled the castle with.”

He turned away.

“Aster!” My voice was louder than I wanted it to be. “How long have you known?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “The oath doesn’t allow them to talk of it, but I heard your uncle…”

“All this time and you never told me!” Betrayal flickered at the edge of my emotions.

“There was nothing we could’ve done, and you were so…” He turned to me then, but still didn’t meet my eyes; instead, he focused on my hair.

Young and innocent.

I crossed my arms and dug my nails into the skin on my biceps.

Silence…

“It was so very clever… those boys… so many wanted to be Riders and didn’t care what they had to do to get it. But Lex… He needed persuading…” I glared at him as he spoke. “And whips and chains were… your uncle’s favourite. We were always good at sneaking around, remember? I got to him, but it was too late. All the princes were beaten or tortured into submission, to take an oath they hadn’t even heard being spoken. Then the Fates played a fucking brilliant hand… When they emerged and became bonded on the last night of Yule, their flock was revealed. Each prince was part of the same flock. Kings called it the Elite Tracker Flock, as if it were their idea all along.”

It was one more perfect lie. “The Elite Tracker Flock is the flock that defies all borders on the ground, but every day they’re pitted against each other. Forced to follow their King’s demands and not the interests of the flock.”

He lifted off the bed and strode over to me and hovered just out of reach. I was healed because he had brought me here, but there was a growing ache in my chest. “Once Bronwen and the Riders know that the book’s fixed… If they find out you can read it… There’ll be plans made that I won’t be able to…”

And that’s when my insides twisted, making me step forward and wrap my arms around his waist and drag him closer. He was warm and strong and always trying to save me, and I was trying to save myself. The warmth of his shoulder against my cheek was just like old times. Times that had long gone. Because I understood what he was saying. That he had an oath to Bronwen; a connection to the Riders. But not to me. Not anymore.

It was goodbye.

It was always goodbye with us.

When I had collected every scrap of self-control from the depths of my soul, I pulled back. And he let me go, but his hand was still outstretched.

“Come back with me, and I’ll try… You’ll be safe with me.” He tugged at the hem of my tunic, and I stepped into him once more before I could think better of it. “I’ll convince her it’s me you should marry.” When he cupped my face, there was such deep sadness in his eyes, and it told me that’s exactly what he wanted. It was all he had ever wanted. For us to be together, but the distance between us seemed to grow with every passing day.

“The normal life was stripped from us a long time ago. I was forged…”

He glowered at me, and my narrowed eyes told him the rest: I was forged in destruction, and I’ll rise like a roaring fire. I had vowed on the battlements, and I had spoken those exact words to him again before he’d left on a mission he had never returned from. Now, I meant it more than ever.

I moved the subject away from my hungry need for revenge. “What about Ember? Kit said that she was in the Wilds with that crazy Rider. I have to get to her.”

He stilled then, understanding how far into danger I was prepared to go. “That’s rumour, Wren, nothing more. We gather the facts, and then we act. You don’t just…” He tugged a hand through his hair and turned away. “You can’t. The Wilds stayed out of the war, but not because they sided with us; they just didn’t want to lose men. They waited for the fall and then stormed in and started claiming lands along the northern border. Large parts of Annatalia are in their hands now. It’s how they feed their people and prosper. On. Our. Lands.”

And yet here he was with Ruckus etched into his skin. That’s what I wanted to shout back, but I didn’t because what was done was done. Almost all of me understood what it was like to make impossible decisions when backed into a corner.

Instead, I focused back on Ember. “If that Rider took her… Does he know who she is? And the Wilds… They hated my aunt even more than my uncle. She was meant to marry the King of the Wilds and then poisoned him before fleeing. Ember’s mother killed that Rider’s uncle…” I couldn’t even put into words how bad that was. And how every instinct screamed at me to find her. But Ember was a force of nature, and I had to believe that she would survive until I found a way to get to her. “And then there’s…” Thorn.

“She’s ruthless and cunning. God help anyone who goes after her.” His warm hands reached under my tunic and over my stomach, tugging me closer. Trying to hold on to me when I was already leaving. “What I know is that I trained her well, and she’s a vicious thing under all her polite manners—”

“And Ember?” His head dipped to find skin, but I wouldn’t be distracted. “If he’s removed her anklet, he’ll see her.”

I lifted my chin to the ceiling, as soft lips trailed lower and lower. But I was trying to fight the panic welling up in me. Ember was beautiful, with flaming red hair that came from her Celtic warrior mother, whereas Thorn looked like her father…dark hair and darker skin. They didn’t look anything like sisters, and that was always the talk of the court. It had isolated them. But it had also made us a close little unit.

My mind wasn’t on what he was doing, and Aster had realised. “We’ll find them. I’ve people looking for them. Where are you going next? What is the plan?”

I wondered why he hadn’t asked me that before. He should have asked me that before. It was almost insulting. “We had to get out. Thorn believed that Settlecent would give us refuge.”

“That’s over the canyon. How?”

I shrugged in reply, and the lie came easily. “We’d just work it out as we went.” Looking down, I ran my hand through his soft hair, swept a thumb over his cheekbone, his stubbled skin rough against my palm. My insides hollowed out as I said, “There was no other choice…”