Still, I pull out my phone and text Alice to let her know where I am and that I’m okay before putting my phone on silent. When the screen goes black, we sit in the darkness listening to the voices downstairs until the house becomes quiet again.

I start to wonder if I should find some pajamas and sneak into one of the spare rooms to go to bed for real. I reach up to my hair and tug on my bun. I’d hate to sleep without my satin pillowcase. Maybe Felicity has a scarf?

Before I can slip off the bed, Nick starts to speak, his voice low and disembodied in the pitch-black room.

“Most Scion parents can’t wait until their child is old enough to begin training. I know my dad couldn’t. My mother, though? When I look back, it was obvious that she was terrified.”

“You don’t have to talk about this now, if you don’t want to.”

“I do. Want to.”

I reach for his hand in the darkness, and he squeezes my palm.

“My mother was raised in a Vassal family, and she Paged right away but never tried for a Squire title. Marrying a Scion of Arthur was the next best thing, her parents figured. My dad was never Called, but Scions of Arthur still hold… a lot of power. When I was growing up, she and my dad fought a lot. About my future, about my dad’s training regimen. I couldn’t go to regular school; he homeschooled me so he’d have more control over my studies. I was eight when Dad started bringing other Lieges around to train me. He told them not to go easy just because I was a kid. Because really, I wasn’t a kid. I was their king. And they didn’t. Go easy, that is. They…”

Nick pauses, and I can hear him swallow once, twice. I’m scared that he’s crying and I don’t know what to do. I press my shoulder into his and hope I can send my warmth and strength over to him. When he starts again, his voice is thick with memory.

“It’s not the broken bones or the bruises, the black eyes or the concussions, that keep me up at night. Those were healed by a Scion of Gawain. It’s the look in my mother’s eyes when I’d come inside, like the sight of me was carving holes into her heart. They’d fight the most those days.”

He takes a deep breath in the darkness, and I take one with him because I want him to know I’m here.