Linden’s olive skin turns bright red. She’s squeezing her lips together so hard, I’m surprised she hasn’t sliced them off with her teeth.

“Yes,” I breathe. “I am also Wolf’s granddaughter.”

Something about those words hangs in the air, like a smoke signal curling against a blue sky on a clear day.

“I’ll kill her!” Linden says, finally losing control of her emotions as she draws the blade from her hip.

“You will not,” Cyan says, lifting a hand and looking down at her with a pointed glare. “At least not until we understand why she’s here.”

Cyan turns back to me with a gleam in his eyes, and I swallow down my nervousness. Maybe revealing who I am was a mistake. But how else was I supposed to get close to him? At least he finally showed up and I wasn’t forced to resort to more drastic measures.

“Open it,” Cyan says to a guard who waits in the shadows. “I won’t restrain you,” he says, addressing me. “Provided you’re willing to cooperate as my guest.”

He presses a large hand to his pale, carved chest and gives me the same pointed look.

“Sure,” I say. “I didn’t come here to cause trouble.”

I mean . . . that’s sort of true.

Any trouble I’m here to cause is completely against my will. So that counts, right?

The guard opens my cell door, and then Cyan and Linden turn as the king beckons me to follow. I do as he says as two more guards bring up our rear.

Guest, indeed.

We head up the same stairs I was dragged down earlier. Cyan and Linden speak in low voices, their bodies still weirdly close, his hand resting on her lower back, but I can’t parse out their conversation.

When we enter the brightly lit palace, Cyan stops to address me. “Come, dinner is waiting.”

He says it cordially as if I truly am an invited guest, but I’m not about to forget how he told Linden that she couldn’t kill me for now.

I eye him with suspicion, but his half-cocked smile doesn’t waver. Linden, on the other hand, keeps throwing me looks as dirty as the water we used to clean the sheets in Nostraza.

“Okay,” I say before he nods and then continues walking, his bare feet quiet against the smooth floors.

We pass through a set of arched glass doors out onto a large balcony with a white pergola decorated with strips of sheer white fabric blowing in the breeze. The ocean stretches before us, crystal blue and sparkling. The sea in Aphelion had been stunning, but there’s something extra about this ocean. A technicolor quality in the hue and the way the waves roll over one another like I’m watching a painting spring to life.