“Your Majesty? Jasmine?” Pagiel glanced between us. “What are you doing here?”

“You already know,” I said, trying to present an air of peace and calm. “We need to talk about these raids you’re on. Pagiel, you know they’re not right.”

“Humans have plenty!” exclaimed one of his followers. “We’re entitled to reap our share.”

Pagiel silenced him with a look, and the guy cringed. Somehow, the boy sidekick I’d befriended had become more of a formidable leader than I’d suspected.

“The people in my kingdom are hungry,” said Pagiel. “They are in yours too. Can you honestly say you don’t want to help them?”

“No one’s starving anymore,” I argued. “We’re on rations, yeah, but at least we’re surviving honorably.”

Pagiel shook his head. “We talked about this before. Honor doesn’t enter into it—only survival. Besides, isn’t this what I’m supposed to be doing?”

I winced at the bitterness in his voice. So. He knew. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. If he’d been back and forth between the worlds in the last few days, word would have gotten to him about his heritage.

“You aren’t ‘supposed’ to be doing anything,” I said gently. “You make your own choices.”

“That’s not what I hear,” he said. “I heard what everyone said when I was back there. They’ve all got plans for me. Even my grandmother does. Why else wouldn’t she have told me?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. There was a raw pain on his face that broke my heart. Maybe he’d technically reached manhood by gentry standards, but he was still a boy in many ways. He’d been thrust into a world he wasn’t ready for, had his life irrevocably changed. I knew the feeling, and I ached for him. “Let me help you. Come back with me so we can talk.”

That set off alarms for him. The wind rose again, whipping my hair around. “‘Talk’? I’m not stupid. I know what that means. You’ll put me in iron and lock me away.”

“Stop that,” I snapped. With barely a thought, I killed his wind magic. He might be strong, but Auntie Eugenie was stronger. He cringed a bit, feeling my magic dwarf his. “I’ll win if we fight, and I don’t want it to come to that. We’re family, Pagiel. And in a lot of ways ... it feels right, you know? You’ve stood by me since we met. I want to do the same for you. I swear to you, I won’t hurt you. Neither will Dorian. We’ll work this out together.”