Another mission east across the gaping ravine to steal and destroy, followed by a long trek home. I didn’t do my brethren the disrespect of warping back to the Keep when many of them could not. Not when there was no urgency. No need.

Nothing awaited me—save for the same old shit.

Only now, our king had found himself a mate.

A golden one, to make matters worse. Holed up in her special frilly rooms right next door to Dade’s, the princess of Sinshell had yet to make peace with her fate. That she was beholden to Vordane’s king despite how much she wished otherwise.

I couldn’t say I blamed her. We had ruined and ravaged numerous parts of her precious kingdom. And we would continue to. Though not without reason.

But something told me that because of our king’s obsession with the princess, that very reason—his entire life’s purpose—would soon run dry.

So to say I didn’t like the swan was putting it mildly. Though I wasn’t yet sure if that were because she would be the end to the only thing that had kept me rising from bed each dawn, or if maybe, it was because she and Dade made me sick for reasons I’d spent well over a year trying to recover from.

I’d tasted joy. I’d bathed in its fleeting magic, believing I could somehow tame it. Keep it. Make it mine. In its swift absence, I’d learned that joy was merely like everything else in this world—just another form of poison that would leave you to rot after having its way with you.

I wanted to keep going. I needed to keep going.

Dade’s vengeance on those who’d robbed him of his parents, and Vordane of their previous beloved rulers, meant more than vengeance to some of us.

It was an escape. An outlet for so much more than grief and fury. Without it, I wasn’t sure what the fuck I’d do. Command a legion to patrol our lands and deal with minor squabbles? Skip rocks across the Night Sea in hopes they might smack into the windows of a certain female’s home and she’d scent whom had sent them?

Insanity.

I’d lost more than sleep to the best female I’d ever had, the only creature I wanted to share space in this eternal life with. I’d damned near lost my fucking mind.

And I’d been searching for it ever since.

We arrived at the Keep two days later, tired, grumpy as shit, and with King fucking Dade nowhere to be found.

“He’s taken the princess on an outing to the city,” Fang supplied when I entered the war room and cursed at the piles of nonsense all over the meeting table.