“Why?”
“Because—” Kye sighed, letting his hands fall back into his lap. “Because he said someone had been trying to kill him for the past three years. That he didn’t trust anybody in the palace and was only telling me now because of what I’d just witnessed.”
“Why not alert the guards, though?”
He tilted his head slowly at me, a stitch creasing his brows. “Did you tell anyone in Leihani when someone was trying to kill you?”
I closed my mouth, effectively silenced. But it wasn’t a fair comparison. In Leihani, I’d been the most hated person on the island. Hadrian was a crown prince. Thousands of people cared whether he lived or died.
Kye stretched his shoulders against the base of the tree. “Paranoia is paranoia, Leihani. Hadrian might have a kingdom of future subjects who love him, but in the City of Towers, he has few friends. When you’re born into a political game, you don’t tell the other players that someone’s trying to take you out. It leads to questions ofwhy, and Hadrian can’t expose his sickness. It puts a target on his back.”
“It shouldn’t be that way,” I murmured, returning to the folds of my pants. Creases gathered across my thighs, the salty air mutinous against the rough fabric. I swallowed as I ran my hands across them, a tightness in my chest. I’d spent my childhood building castles in the island sand, convinced that the royal family lived ideal lives, raised in a lavish palace, eating exquisite food and attending private parties.
It had never occurred to me that such a fate could be as isolated as my own.
“I vowed to find whoever it was,” Kye said softly. “I promised I’d stay by his side and protect him. I refused to do what he asked. To pretend nothing was wrong, waiting around for him to die. But then he told me that he was sick—” Kye’s voice faltered. He swallowed, staring into the rock formations with eyes suddenly bloodshot.
“I’m a coward,” he finally ground out.
“What?” I abandoned my pant wrinkles to gape up at him in surprise. “You are not.”
“I am,” he sighed. “Hadrian told me that either from sickness or murder, he’d likely die in the next few years. And I was fucking devastated. But underneath my worry for him, I couldn’t help but think about where that left me. That his death sentenced me to the throne. I’d spent my whole life trying to escape it, and in the breadth of a few spoken words, I realized I never would. I’d be forced to take the crown, and then I’d slowly lose my mind to madness, like all the kings before me. I’d beat my wife. My children would grow up terrified of me—”
“Kye,” I cut in, but he shook his head.
“I’d live drunk on power from an endless cup. The people I considered my friends would only pretend to be loyal. My advisors would jostle for influence through me. I’d live more surrounded than any person in the kingdom, but I’d be utterly alone.
“And then I realizedthatwas all I’d needed. The simple idea that someday I’d have to take it on. That was all it had taken for madness to begin creeping in. That it was taking hold already. I could feel myself spiraling from it, and I couldn’t pull myself out. It was like suffocating from too much oxygen. I spent two weeks drunk, trying to forget it. But I couldn’t.” He swallowed, gaze fixed on the sea. “Everywhere I went, I was surrounded by my own fate. And the words burrowed into my mind.Future king, future king, future king.I didn’t care about anything anymore. Training in the yard, sneaking from the castle, learning to farm and cook and forge. I didn’t…” His eyes closed, his voice falling into something just outside a whisper. “I didn’t care about being alive if that’s the road my life was headed down. A prison made of glass, disguised as a palace. I stood at the cliffs for an hour, waiting for the courage to jump. And then took a carriage into the city and stole a rowboat from the shipyard because I was too much of a coward to even take my own life, but I figured the sea would take it for me.”
He darted a glance at me, looking away just as quickly. My eyes trickled over him, a perfect illustration of laziness as he leaned into the tree, the delineated muscles of his torso exuding all the arrogance in the world, and I wondered if it was all for show. If it had been conditioned into his body, as instinctive as the need for his heart to beat. If survival for a prince meant he couldn’t show fear. Even now, alone with me.
I swallowed the knot in my throat as his words from a few days before returned to me.
I didn’t think I’d come back from Leihani.
Kye exhaled, long and hard. “The cruelest part is, Hadrianwantsto be king. He’s spent his whole life preparing for it. He’s studied harder and knows more than any heir I’ve ever heard of. I’d be half the sovereign he’d be.”
“That’s not true,” I whispered.
Kye didn’t answer. Gazing ahead, he watched the water crash against the rocks. “Two days ago, when you dove underwater and didn’t come back, that thought kept surfacing in my head,” he gently rasped. “That you’d asked so many times why I came to Leihani. On the island, I’d wanted you to believe that it was because I’d sought some sense of adventure across the sea. That I was brave and daring. But I’m not. I was running from my future. Hoping the sea would steal it from me.”
A flock of birds passed overhead, fighting the air currents as they traveled out over the channel. I swallowed, watching them dip and glide. “You’re not a coward, Kye.”
His lips quirked, a sad smile. “Why do you love the sea, Leihani?”
I opened my mouth, not ready to let him drive the conversation in a new direction. But at the look in his eyes, pleading with me to leave it, I halted, shifting uncomfortably. Confiding my half of our bargain suddenly seemed like an unfair trade. “It’s not a long, articulate answer like yours was.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “I still want to hear it.”
“The sea.” My chest surrendered a breath in a soft heave. “The sea just lives in me. In my body. In my blood. It’s my oldest friend. And at times, my only friend. And nothing else calms me like the sound of its voice. The stroke of its tide. It’s just… my home.”
Not meeting my eyes, a small smile ghosted across Kye’s mouth. He swallowed, nodding slowly, and I wondered what he thought of my diminutive confession.
“The sea suits you. I think you’re its home as well.” Beside us, a log in the fire gave a loudpop. Kye drummed his fingers against his thigh again, and when he finally looked up, I knew our conversation had ended. “We need to go over our plan.”
Sighing through my nose, I gave a solemn nod. “Okay. Where should we start?”
14
