His laugh was humorless. “It’s not that simple.”

“Isn’t it? If you don’t want to be what they need—don’t. No one forces us to wield our power, Galen. So use yours to water fields instead of drowning the villages that depend on them. Everyone will tell you otherwise, but the world needs people like you.”

“And what am I, exactly?”

“Kind. Good.” She squeezed his shoulder. “You have a gentle heart, Galen. Protect it. Use it.”

“Gentle hearts make dead kings.”

“I think your sister more than makes up for the terrifying-ruler angle.”

“That was their biggest mistake—taking the crown from her.” He squinted out at the sea. “Sometimes I wish I’d had more time with them—my parents. To ask them what they were thinking. To ask if keeping with tradition was worth it, knowing they were forcing both of us into roles we didn’t want.”

“We really are a miserable pair,” Ranka said wryly. “The gentle king and his monstrous witch queen.”

Galen’s eyes went to her hand. Ranka braced herself for what always came next—the nonsense reassurances she wasn’t a monster, she could be a hero, she could be good. They were all lies. No one who’d done the things she’d done was good. Ongrum may have been cruel, but at least she was honest about what Ranka was.

“If we need gentle kings,” Galen said softly, “then we need monsters, too.”

Ranka looked up at him.

“My father was a beloved ruler—and a monster. I have monsters in my navy, my military, the mage academy.” The prince drummed his fingers on his knee, and the storm shifted with a subtle stir of the winds. “When the heroes come back in death wagons, who do people look to? A peaceful king? A benevolent priestess?” He looked at her. “They look to the monsters. They look for someone who knows how to win.”

A chill rolled over her. “Someone who can bear it.”

“That’s what I can’t do—and what you can. Bear it. Though I wish you didn’t have to either.”

Ranka watched the waves, and finally she asked the question she’d wondered since the day they met. “If you had it your way, Galen—if you could give up the crown—would you?”

“Yes,” Galen said instantly, softly, with every bit of conviction in the world, as though he’d been waiting a lifetime for someone to ask and she’d been the first. And maybe she was. “If you’re asking me if I could step down—if I could give it to Aramis—I would, a thousand times over.” He paused, his attention on her. “Would you?”

Ranka turned her hand over, her coal-black nails flashing in the murky lighting, and knew he wasn’t asking her about crowns. He had seen the truth of her in that alley. They all had.