Kestrel found their playful banter comforting, but still she wanted to know them more. “So, are you all…”
“Princes of Irongate?” Micah finished for her. “Can’t you tell by our dashing good looks and charm?”
Leighton shot a glower at his brother before returning his attention to Kestrel. “He means, yes. We are. And I’m sorry Ididn’t come forward with that information sooner but, we were meant to travel through Vallonde unrecognized. And then once you saw me without my face covered, I originally thought you’d know who I was. When you said you didn’t recognize me, it felt like a blessing, and spoiling our disguises to out our titles seemed too risky.”
“She probably only remembers the most handsome of the Erickson brothers, so don’t let it hurt your ego too much,” Micah teased, giving the fox a rough scratch on the top of its head.
A relentless smile worked its way onto Kestrel’s expression. And upon seeing it, Micah fist bumped the air in victory. But Kestrel was already remembering something else Thom had said. Something about them belonging to a corrupt crown.
“Why were you trying to stay unrecognized in—did you call it Vallonde?”
Micah’s silent cheering stopped. He gaped at her, dumbfounded. “Cursed sky! You really don’t know much about anything do you—hey! Ow!” When Leighton flicked a pebble at him, Micah rolled his eyes. “Fine, fine. You can tell her everything and I’ll just be over here, keeping my mouth shut like a good prince.” He turned his attention instead to the sand, where he started to draw patterns with his finger.
Leighton cleared his throat and tossed his golden hair out of his eyes. “We’re not exactly welcomed this far south. Irongate and Vallonde have had many…disagreements throughout Grimtol’s history.”
There it was again. That name—both of them, she’d heard for the first time ever today. “Vallonde? Grimtol? I feel like I’m supposed to know these names, but I don’t.”
Micah’s head jerked up, eyes bulging again, but his brother silenced him with a scowl and returned his attention to her.
“That’s alright. I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”His crystalline eyes locked with hers, sending an arctic shudder up her spine.
“T-thank you. You have no idea how much I appreciate the honesty.”
He nodded. As he considered his next words, Leighton wet his lips. It was an innocuous act, and one that very likely had nothing to do with her and everything to do with the sweltering heat beating down from above, but Kestrel found her body responding in strange ways. His proximity reminded her of when they were in the alleyway, and how she could feel the heat pouring off him, feel the static charge between their two bodies.
In her books, the scenes Kestrel loved reading almost as much as the heroic ones were the romantic ones. The ones where the tension would build and build before finally bursting into a crescendo that would send delicious pulses of excitement to her core.
But those were stories.
What happened in the alleyway…it had been a mistake. She needed to remember that.
Kestrel jerked her gaze away and stared down at the fox instead, anywhere but at Leighton.
After thinking about his next words, Leighton finally found them. With his chin held high, he pounded a fist to his chest. “Allow me to formally introduce myself. I am Prince Leighton Erickson, eldest son of King Ulfaskr, and heir to the throne of Irongate.”
So it really was true. Thom hadn’t been lying about that part at least.
Mortification heated Kestrel’s face. Not only was he a prince, but he was also thecrown prince?
“Heir to the throne? Does that mean someday you’ll be the?—”
“King of Irongate?” Micah supplied, finishing the final touches on what looked like a shield with lightning bolts on it drawn in the sand. “That’s my big brother for you, always the impressive one.”
A king.
The boy she had kissed in an alleyway would one day be king!
She wondered if she should get up and bow, but it seemed a little late for that.
“Someday, yes,” Leighton agreed, but there was a darkness to his tone that didn’t belong there. Not for someone who shone so brilliantly. Someone who was destined to become a king. “Are you familiar with the Cursed Night?”
This one, she did know.
“Actually, yes—” she said, perking up with confidence at first. Then she remembered that everything she thought she knew had come from Thom, and that so far most of what he’d told her had turned out to be false. “Or at least, I’ve heard a version of the story. But I don’t know if it’s the truth...”
The crown prince nodded, his sky-blue eyes drifting somewhere distant. “I was only five when it happened, but I still remember it like it was yesterday. The day the Corrupt Queen of Caelora placed a dark curse upon Grimtol. Were you alive then to see it?”
“Only just barely. Thom tells me…” she swallowed the lump around his name and thought about correcting herself. It seemed wrong though and she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Not yet anyway. “He tells me I was just a babe; I had been born that very day.”
