“When I was old enough to understand, yes.” His wings shift, shadows rippling across the stone floor. “She whispered it to me when we were alone. Told me that royal blood ran in my veins. That I was more than what the world saw.”
Every word he speaks haunts my mind, the truth sitting like a stone in my gut, cold and immovable.
“I never had the chance to confront him,” Aerix continues, bitterness edging each word. “I was turned into a night fae before I could decide if I even wanted to.”
“You speak as if you weren’t turned by choice.” I watch him carefully, cautious to do nothing to set him off, despite the storm growing inside me.
Aerix’s smile turns razor-sharp. “Curious about your brother’s past, Winter Prince?”
“Let’s just say this isn’t the type of family reunion I’d always dreamed of,” I say, which earns what seems to be a genuine laugh from him.
“If you’re disappointed,” he says, a note of vulnerability breaking through, “imagine how it feels to be the brother who never had a chance.”
Sharpness shoots through my lungs at how wrong he is.
“Having a father who claims you but doesn’t care for you isn’t better, Aerix.” I lower my sword slightly, and he tilts his head, studying me with what I’m not sure is fascination or resentment. “It’s just a different kind of hell. One where you’re acknowledged but unwanted, existing purely as a weapon sharpened until there’s nothing left of you but the blade you’ve become.”
“So naïve, Brother,” he murmurs, as if his mind is lost somewhere else. “You speak as if I ever received a speck of love in this court.”
“Howdidyou end up in this court?” I ask, bracing myself for anything.
“Back to story time?” His sharp smile returns.
“Why not?” I laugh, shards of self-control slipping away with every heartbeat. “Since you’ve decided to ruin my life with revelations, I’ll allow you to do the job thoroughly.”
RIVEN
“Ruin?”Aerix’s wings flare, the air around him going still. “Is that what this feels like to you? Finding out about me means your carefully built world isruined?”
“In a situation where I’m forced to either kill my own blood or let my enemy go free?” I shake my head and chuckle, realizing how blinded by reality this newfoundbrotherof mine must be. “Yes, I’d call that a fairly catastrophic blow to the life I thought I knew.”
Aerix’s wings retract sharply, as if I’ve struck him physically.
“You want the rest of the truth? Fine,” he snarls, his voice dangerously soft, each word carefully measured. “After my mother’s death, I served in the Winter Court’s militia. Kept my head down. Tried to prove myself as something more than the forgotten bastard prince nobody knew existed.”
I watch him closely, my chest panging at the way he says it. Because I understand more than anyone what it’s like to try proving your worth and existence to someone who doesn’t care.
I also hate myself for doing something as stupid asempathizingwith him.
“Even in the militia, I was invisible—until I met a noblewoman who shattered my world.” A bitter smile twists his lips, and he shakes his head, like he’s disgusted by the memory. “She was everything I wanted, and everything I could never have.”
“I’m guessing that didn’t stop you,” I say, my tone less sharp now, despite myself. Because that desire, that impossible longing—I know it too well. I felt it every time Sapphire looked at me with hatred after being struck by Eros’s lead arrow. I know how consuming it can become, how it can rip away your control and sanity until you barely recognize who you are anymore.
“It didn’t.” He looks directly into my eyes, challenging and unflinching. “I was young. Foolish. Desperate enough to believe that love could erase the lines drawn by our births. But she was terrified of losing her status. She wanted me, yes, but she valued her reputation more. So, I asked around for potions that might help her... open her mind.”
“A love potion?” I balk at the thought of this dark, dangerous Night Prince wanting to create something as pathetic as alove potion.
Yet even as I speak, a chilling realization coils in my chest. Because after Sapphire was struck by Eros’s arrow, how many boundaries would I have crossed—how many parts of my soul would I have sacrificed—to bring back her love?
All of them,I realize. I would have given everything to her… and Ididgive everything to her. All of my blood—all ofme.It all belongs to her now.
Aerix holds my gaze, and something dark and desperate passes between us—a shared obsession that burns like fire in our icy hearts. “It was foolish,” he says quietly, as if confessing his deepest shame. “But my closest friend claimed she could help. She offered to take me into the Wandering Wilds to find the ingredients.”
Ice crawls up my spine at the direction this story is taking, spreading through my veins like poison, freezing my heart in my chest.
“I trusted her completely,” he continues, frost patterns that remind me eerily of my own racing across the floor from where he stands. “But she led me straight into a group of night fae. She wanted to join them, and they promised her she could if she brought someone with her. Specifically, someone from the Winter Court’s militia. Someone strong who wouldn’t be missed. Someone likeme.”
Shock and a sickening sense of understanding twist inside me. Because this betrayal—this deep, gut-wrenching abandonment—I’ve felt it, too.
