“What was I to do? Our goddess was dead. And you, the last of the royal bloodline my family swore to protect? I saw you knocked from the platform. I watched you trampled underfoot. You, Lycaena, the rebellion, our freedom; it was all dead. And so I stood before the people of this island and cast aside my faith. I was unchained, and finally free to return home. And in a cruel, twisted joke, who do I find waiting for me there but my uncle Rayan, eager to tell me of the young prince Cyrus’s miraculous survival.”

A hundred conflicting emotions jumbled together within Cyrus. That she should undergo such trauma, only for his survival to be a supposed balm? He felt pity, and guilt, and sorrow, and a formless, shapeless desire to make things better despite having not the slightest clue what the first step might even be.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Keles wiped her eyes, carefully with the tips of her fingers so that it would not smear the paint. If she were emotional, she kept it well hidden from her voice.

“I must admit I attended this party with an ulterior motive,” she said after a time. “When my uncle told me you’d make an appearance, I knew I had to accompany him. I had to see what kind of man the missing prince had become.”

Keles stared at him, and under such fierce study, he withered and looked to the Crystal Sea instead. He didn’t know why he even cared, he’d just met this woman, yet he found himself agonizing over every second of her silence.

“I pray I didn’t disappoint,” he said when it seemed she would offer nothing to put him out of his misery.

Keles winked.

“You almost did.”

“Almost?” He laughed. The tension in the air dissolved, and he was beyond thankful. “So how did I save myself? When I stumbled during my introduction? Or when I nearly exposed my face trying to eat one of those grapes the servants were handing out on their platters?”

“When you gave the soldier a sword to defend himself.”

Cyrus shrugged, the mood between them darkening. So much for that easing tension.

“Maybe I wanted to humiliate him in battle before I killed him?”

“I don’t believe that was the reason, and you don’t believe that, either. The war isn’t real to the wealthy, not even here on Thanet. Most bowed their heads, bent their knees, and promised allegiance to the Everlorn Empire the second they cut your parents down.”

“They’re risking their necks now by aiding us,” Cyrus argued, not sure why he was defending the strangers he’d met mere hours before.