I didn't want to think about lying there in bed together, total contentment settling over me while I looked into Dain's eyes. I didn't like knowing how close I'd come to choosing to forget everything that had come before. For one ferocious moment, I despised the soulmate bond with everything in me, my fear and anger and frustration focusing on what had started all of this in a blinding supernova of hatred.

But through the fading white light slipped memories, as sleep rose up to claim me again.

Susan saying, "You were going to die."

Days later, Kamharida telling me, "It doesn't shame his memory to continue to live," and me accepting that I had chosen an unknown cost for the chance of survival, and that the price was a year and a day spent in Dain's company.

Lying in the sun with Dain, hearing him say, "Nothing is certain, and to lose all hope is to die."

The intensity of the look in his eyes as he said, "Do these things and I will strive to unlearn the lessons of my childhood and the century since for you."

Dain's voice, soft and full of emotion. "Stay with me. Do with me what you will. I'm the one who gave myself to you."

I woke up in the morning, the nightmares of the night drifting away like fog, leaving only the sense that I'd realized something important, that I needed to remember. But, try as I might, I couldn't remember, even when I went over to the door and leaned my head against the wood.

"If it was that important, you'll figure it out again," I muttered, and delivered myself into Kamharida's capable hands to be prepared for open court.

My contingent of guards was back down to four, though all of them were far warier than they'd been before the latest attempt on Dain's life. They fell into step around me as I headed down the familiar route to the throne room.

"Did they catch the archer?" I asked the guard to my left. Axily was the spectacular redhead with freckles down onto his chest and emerald-green eyes who'd announced me to the Queen that first day, and I'd admired his wicked fast glamor-casting many times since in the fighting courts. "I was so wrapped up in willing the big holes in the crown prince to close up that I forgot to ask."

"Feeling some affection for the crown prince?" he asked, his ears moving and eyes scanning as we moved.

"Nobody gets to kill him except for me," I said in a chipper voice. "Think of how distressing it would be to find out someone else got to your perfect nemesis before you did."

One of the other guards snorted; Axily only smiled. "They did catch the archers, your highness," he said. "I believe that is the final order of business at open court today."