He just didn’t understand why she couldn’t love him that much while she was alive.

Closing the door to her room, he crept down to the end of the hallway lined with portraits of past Valerios, all dark curls and sky-blue eyes, each as dour and dapper as the last. At the very end were his mother and father, holding each other’s hands, staring out of the portrait as if judging his ratty winter coat and glitching arm.

While his father smiled, one side of his mouth slightly higher than the other, his mother’s lips were pressed into a thin, disapproving line, as if to say, Look how far you’ve fallen.

He tried to ignore the portrait as he came into her study. The first thing that hit him was the smell of leather—leather-bound books and leather-covered chairs—and then the muskiness of old wood. The same thin layer of dust coated every inch of the mahogany desk and the towering bookshelves and the regal busts of Emperors of old. He crept into the study, the Calavanian rug beneath his snow-stuck shoes soft.

His metal arm twitched again, and he hugged it tighter against his chest. Not now. His arm had done so well—so well—the last few hours. He was beginning to realize when it acted out—when he wanted to be impulsive but made himself measured and cool. It rebelled against everything his mother had taught him.

Funny, he thought as he fisted his gloved metal hand, my mother always said I wore my heart on my sleeve.

He remembered that the file had been in the bottommost desk drawer, so he went there first—and paused. Fingerprints had broken the dust on the desk. Someone had been in here recently.

“Shit,” he cursed and opened the bottom drawer.

There was nothing there.

“It’s amazing what you can find with a little digging,” said a voice.

Robb glanced up. His brother stood blocking the doorway in a deep brown leather jacket with mink fur at the collar and dark trousers. His boots were well polished and decorated with the Valerio insignia—a snake eating its own tail. He filled the doorway just like he had in Robb’s nightmares, his hair short, the sides shaved with celestial designs, and he narrowed his eyes like their mother always did—disapproving, but not surprised, as if nothing Robb would ever do would be worthy of approval. In his gloved hand was a derelict holo-pad, and he wagged it playfully. “It would seem as though our mother funded all of Lord Rasovant’s early research. It’s all quite startling, really. Ancient tech found in the ruins of a shrine. Apparently, Lord Rasovant looked for it for twenty years, and my mother had hidden it right under his nose.”

“Erik,” he said carefully, reaching out a hand. “I need those files.”

A wolfish smile curled across his lips. “Do you now? And what would you give me for them?”

“I’m not here to play a game.”

“The crown?” Erik asked. “Your life?”