“I am not trying to make you angry,” he says, voice droll. “I am trying to make you understand.”

“You weren’t negligent! We were tricked!” I snap. “No one had seen a goruchel like Rhaz in years, and he fooled everyone. Even the Regents didn’t see Davis’s endgame because he’d put on a show for decades. If they missed their own Viceroy’s betrayal, then aren’t they guilty, too?”

“Nicholas is—I was his Kingsmage, and I failed to keep him safe within the Lodge.” He rubs a hand over his face. “Because I was distracted.”

“Distracted by what?”

“By you, if you must know.” His eyes land on me again, heat now at a defeated simmer. “By all that I had seen you do. What you meant for my future and Nicholas’s. By everything that changed in the span of one night, because of one sword and one girl.”

“Oh,” I whisper.

“But Kingsmages are not granted excuses,” Sel says. He leans back, resting one ankle over his knee. “And let’s not forget my pièce de résistance. Going after you in the graveyard with my hound…”

“You didn’t know what I was,” I hiss, my own fist clenching, “No one did. I was a Page then, not the Scion of Arthur.”

“You have always been the Scion of Arthur, Briana.” Sel repeats what Erebus and Nick have both said to me, but his tone couldn’t be further from theirs. From Erebus, the reminder was a gentle correction. From Nick, reassurance and devotion. From Sel, all I hear is harsh recrimination, an indictment—and he’s not done.

“You have been the Scion of Arthur from the moment we met, and long before. You have been the Scion of Arthur from the moment you were born. And neither of us can afford to forget it.”

For some reason, my cheeks flood with heat. My eyes grow hot with unshed tears.

“The Regents will do whatever it takes to maintain the apparent sanctity of the Lines, even if they have revealed their disrespect for the Scions themselves.” He keeps talking, ignoring my reaction. “As a member of the military, the incontestable penalty for the attempted murder of a Scion of Arthur is death.”

The space tightens in on me, squeezing all thought from my mind. Then my fear and anger pivot to him. “And you turned yourself in? What were you thinking?”

Sel rises slowly, eyes earnest and ferocious, with one hand in his pocket. He closes in on me in two steps and captures my chin with his fingers so that I cannot turn away.