Page 42 of The Winter Prince

He studied her. “What’s wrong?”

She bit her lip.

Something protective—murderous, perhaps—rose in him. “Did Enlo hurt you?”

Her brows drew together briefly before she shook her head. “No one’s hurt me. I’m just… worried about the Court. About the drought. Won’t you tell me what causes it?”

He gave a tired laugh. “Questions again?”

“Yes.” She sounded frustrated. “Let me help you. I can’t if I don’t know the truth.”

The truth. He wasn’t sure what the truth was. Maybe that she’d somehow gone from a nuisance to him to a comfort, a presence he ached for. She represented hope—and not only so his Court would revive, but that he could be what she believed he could. But he barely knew how to make sense of that thought, much less felt at ease to share it with her.

No. He wouldn’t make everything worse by baring those nebulous sentiments to her.

“Do not worry yourself with Elyri matters,” he muttered, looking away.

Her sigh was heavy in the air. Laden with disappointment. But he couldn’t pull himself apart to examine his own feelings while she watched, especially not when he didn’t know how he would look when he understood enough to piece himself back together.

“I... I dreamed of my father last night.” He glanced back at her. She shifted, her gaze dropping to her hands. “That he’s horridly ill. I know it was only a dream, but a part of me is afraid. What if it isn’t? What if he dies and I never get to say goodbye?”

Just like that, every other thought halted.

“You want to go home to him.” The words came out flat, stiff.

Hope lit her eyes, but she shook her head.

“I know I can’t. I made a bargain to stay here for a year and a day, and I’ll see that through.” For her father. The words hovered unspoken in the air. Even now, after all this time, she wasn’t here for Revi. She was here for her father, to save him from a worse fate. “But perhaps if you’d just let me use the kindred stone I brought with me—”

“You can.” Suddenly he was so very tired. Tired of the charade of pretending there was any hope of winning Kienna’s heart. She could never love a beast, but—

The truth sliced into him, all sense of uncertainty stripped away in light of the certainty of losing her.

The truth was that he cared about her. She was joy and hope and light in his life. He was—he hardly dared admit it, even to himself—in love with her. Hopelessly, since she would never return his feelings. And that impossibility was achingly obvious, mocking him at every turn.

He cared about her. And he didn’t want her to suffer with the rest of his Court as his magic faded and summer consumed them, as it was and would inevitably continue doing, without her returning his love. Better to send her home. There was no point in dragging her down with his doomed Court.

“You can,” he said again into the stillness of the room. “With my magic, you could go home. You could be there today.”

She had frozen at his words. “I could go home?” she whispered.

“With my true name, you would have access to my magic. Magic you could use to travel there instantly.” He didn’t add that doing so would take most of his magic out of him, and with how the magic was fading from his Court, he wasn’t entirely sure he could replenish it. Or how the Court would fare with a vacuum of magic, however brief.

But if she left, all hope left with her anyway. Maybe it would be better to let his Court die quickly—as it probably would if his magic was completely drained away—instead of this slow, painful burning one day at a time.

“Thank you,” she said fervently. “I’ll come back. I promise.”

He nodded. There would be nothing to come back to, but he didn’t have the heart to tell her that. He didn’t want her to stay out of a sense of obligation.

“What do I do? When can I leave?”

He looked away. As beautiful as her hope was, he couldn’t bear to watch it bloom across her face.

“You can leave now, if you want,” he admitted, his voice low.

There was only a moment’s hesitation before— “I do.” She was unable—if she even tried—to conceal the eagerness in her voice. “Yes, please. What do I do?”

He swallowed down the protests that wanted to rise in his throat. He didn’t want her to go. He was not ready. He would never be ready.

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