We ate in silence for tense minutes until I finally built the courage to ask what I wanted to know. “So Marvis and his armies…” I sipped more wine, Rorn eyeing my mouth as I swallowed and set the empty glass down. “Are we to merely assume that they’ve vanished?”

“You need not worry about all of that.”

“But I once did,” I said, unexpectedly soft and calling his eyes to mine when I continued, “You used to tell me everything.”

His face fell as though he were just acknowledging that. As though he hadn’t realized before now that he’d withdrawn from me long ago. I would have pitied him if it weren’t for his ruthless selfishness.

“Years.” I dug the blade in deeper. “You ceased bringing me into our daily affairs well before Carelda, Rorn.”

He blinked, lashes lowering. “I know.” He licked his teeth, and I waited to see if what I’d thrown onto the table between us might encourage him to talk, yet I felt little satisfaction when he did. “My,” he started, then stopped and corrected himself. “Our spies have not long returned from Pelvorn with news of ships bearing Marvis’s flag sailing to another continent.”

Pelvorn being the human kingdom of the isle, whose inhabitants had made it a family tradition to torment us. “An entire fleet?”

“Multiple,” he confirmed. “Further surveillance has revealed that they’ve set their sights on a more lucrative venture.”

“And what is this venture?”

He lifted a brow, and his wine to his lips as he eyed me. “Nodoya.”

It was written all over my face, I knew, though I tried to conceal it a failed heartbeat too late.

It couldn’t have been helped as I tried to imagine what beneath the skies might encourage Marvis and his followers to sail that far east, and to a continent far larger than that they’d already brutalized.

Carefully but as carelessly as I could muster, I ripped my eyes from Rorn’s and asked, “Do you know what they wish to find there?”

He took his time to answer, setting his glass down and twisting it side to side over the emerald table linen. “A few things,” he murmured with a twitch to his lips. “Among them, a faerie princess who is rumored to weave gold into clothing.”

“Gold?” I questioned, though I’d already heard as much from Carelda.

He hummed, eyes fixed to the stem of the glass he continuously twisted. “She can also change into a swan.” He smiled, a breathy laugh leaving him on an exhale.

“But a myth, surely.”

“Most myths are derived from truths, and it is said that the last golden fae of Nodoya to weave gold could indeed shift into a swan, but with such abilities comes severe consequences of course, and so she burned out.”

“Burned out?”