“Why do you help her, Ericen? Why are you going along with any of this? You must know it’s wrong. The conscription, the conquering, all of it.”

“Of course I know! But Illucian soldiers serve for life. If I left, I’d be hunted down and executed without mercy.” His eyes narrowed. “Don’t look at me like that.”

I drew back. “Like what?”

“Like you feel sorry for me. I’m not telling you this to earn your pity. This is just the way it is.” He shrugged, as if that simple action could dismiss the severity of his words. “I will earn the respect my mother denied me. I will take her place as Valix and king and do something better with this kingdom than she has.”

“By killing rebels and conscripting children?” I asked.

A muscle flexed in his jaw. “I didn’t volunteer for that raid. My mother ordered me to go in exchange for your trips into the city without guards.”

My anger seized, as if it’d struck a wall. He’d made a deal with his mother. If he hadn’t, who knew what trouble those Vykryn could have caused. They might have been tailing me the night of the ball and followed me to Caylus’s. And Res… I shuddered and prayed Ericen thought it was the cold.

“Thank you,” I said. A wind gusted through the stables, taking the tension with it.

“I meant what I said, Thia,” he said softly. “I don’t want to be your enemy.”

I felt as though I’d reached the edge of a cliff, and tipping over, letting myself fall, could mean redemption…or destruction. Could I really trust this boy, who was at once everything I had learned to hate and yet none of it at all?

“If not enemies,” I began, “then what?”

“Friends?” he suggested, stepping toward me. “I’m in rather short supply.”

“Have you tried being nice to people? I’ve heard that works wonders.”

He smirked. “Sounds boring.”

I laughed, and his eyes gleamed as though the sound delighted him. He leaned against the stall door, his lips curving in something dangerously close to a smile.

“Come spar with me tomorrow,” he said.

“What?”

He pushed off the stall. “In addition to the raid, my mother made me agree to another deal. If I want to be Valix after her, I have to win the Centerian.”

I drew a sharp breath. “You’re entering that bloodbath?”

He pressed on as if he hadn’t heard me, stepping closer. “And since it’s your fault I had to make that deal in the first place, the least you could do is help me prepare for it.”

“My fault?” I repeated.

He stood directly before me now, his broad frame blotting out the moonlight trickling in behind him. “Unless you’re afraid, of course.”