Page 164 of Blood of the Stars

“Because you’re a better person than me,” he said. “That’s the answer to a lot of your questions about the things I do.”

She snorted, and he grinned. That was the Enla he remembered. He closed his eyes, inhaling the flowery perfume she liked to wear. However long he was forced to stay away, he wanted to remember her like this. Even if he was more likely to be stuck with a final image of her snarling and livid.

“We can’t undo the past,” Enla said.

Her words triggered Gaeren’s own shame. The ways he’d failed Daisy as a child. The ways he was probably still failing her as he bumbled through his efforts to protect her.

“Our only choice is to be vigilant about stepping forward into the future.”

Gaeren frowned. “Is that why you don’t look at Croft the way you once looked at Riveran? Are you afraid to let yourself love someone who could hurt you? It’s not right that Riveran spoiled that for you.”

“You don’t look at Lenda at all.” Enla’s quick retort surprised Gaeren. “What spoiled that for you?”

He opened his mouth to say it was Lenda herself who had spoiled it, but he realized that wasn’t true. In many ways, Daisy had—or the memory of her had. His focus and drive to right his wrongs had always held higher priority. And now that he’d met Daisy as a woman instead of a child, the space she’d once held in his heart felt too small, too simple.

Enla leaned back, studying his face, which likely gave away his confusion. “A lot of things in life have been spoiled, but not because of Riveran,” she whispered. “You can’t always believe the lies Mother and Father are forced to tell for the sake of the throne.”

Something cold slithered through Gaeren’s gut. Lies? About Riveran?

Her words shouldn’t surprise him. Lying about the events in Islara wasn’t the first time they’d made such a compromise. But for some reason, he’d never connected that terrible possibility to Riveran.

He twisted away from Enla so he could face her, wrapping his hands around her upper arms. “What lies were they forced to tell?”

Enla winced, and Gaeren released her arms, afraid he’d squeezed with too much force. But her pained expression remained.

“Or maybe the better question is, what truth did they cover up with their lies?” His voice shook, the words coming out stilted.

Enla hushed him, yanking him to the stairway, past the guards and down the path. The guards made to follow, but she waved them away. Gaeren knew he should be thrilled. This could work in his favor. But he was too distracted by Enla’s secrecy and the clear magnitude of what she had to share.

She stopped near the first set of overarching oak trees, the moon at its zenith and barely filtering through the branches to highlight her raised chin, her eyes like flint. “Riveran didn’t break our bond. Mother and Father did.”

Gaeren took a step back, his head spinning, heart pounding. “Impossible. The scandal would never be worth it.”

“It would if he wasn’t worthy of the throne.” Enla said the words with a hint of disgust. “He never had an Awakening. He never received a starlock. It didn’t matter that his starblood concentration was higher than any other because he wasn’t chosen by the Sun.”

Gaeren’s mind raced through his memories—all the times he and Riveran had played with their adolescent magic. Riveran never could do much, but it was the same for most children on the cusp of adulthood. They all had to wait for their Awakening, for the Stars to gift them with a lock of hair to enhance their magic. It was rare for nobility to not be chosen with their high starblood concentration—impossible for a bond of the royal family, or so he’d thought.

Gaeren turned from Enla, grasping the tree for support, sickened by this revelation, by the fact that he’d allowed the deception to change the way he viewed his friend.

“He and I were never meant to be.” Enla’s lip wavered. “The Sun didn’t choose him. He wasn’t worthy of the throne. Mother and Father didn’t want to worry everyone with the possibility that their sons and daughters also wouldn’t be chosen, that the Sun might be choosing fewer progenies.”

Larkos’ prediction that magic was being bred out of the people might not be so far off.

“It doesn’t matter.” Enla pulled her wrap tighter around her shoulders. “The bond was still broken. The real reason doesn’t change anything.”

“It changes everything,” Gaeren whispered. His friend had been faithful. Even worse, Riveran had tried telling Gaeren, but Gaeren had refused to listen.

A flicker of movement down the path caught his eye.

Larkos.

He turned back to his sister, frowning down at her, grateful to at least see a hint of remorse on her face even as he blocked her view of the path. “Maybe he wasn’t worthy of this…throne.” He waved a hand toward their home. “I don’t know. I don’t even care. But he was always worthy of your love.”

Her eyes glistened with unshed tears, her focus too intent on the disappointment oozing from his every pore to notice the clip-clop of the hooves getting closer. She scratched at the scar on her hand, the one nearly hidden by her new bond.

Daisy’s words about scars came back to Gaeren, the idea that some scars were best left as reminders to show weakness and help them grow stronger. Was that why Enla kept her scar? To remind her that Riveran had been a weakness? Or to remind herself that she had been too weak to fight for the man she’d loved?

“Sometimes in order to truly love someone,” Enla hissed, “you have to let them go.”

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