—Princess Aveline Ravelynn of Elaria
I had seen many kings in my life. Too many, in fact.
I had danced with dukes, curtsied before foreign lords, and endured the grasp of more princes than I cared to count—each one more polished and practiced than the last. But none of them had ever looked at me the way the two kings of Dravareth did.
They didn't look like men come to beg for favor. They looked like they could take anything they wanted—and they were merely choosing not to. For now.
When my father introduced them, I had been watching from the shadows, half-hidden behind a marble pillar. I had told Lira I only needed a moment to breathe, but really, I just… I didn't want to be seen. Not until I could sort out what I was feeling.
I'd never heard silence take a room like that before.
Not even when the High King of Tharnis, half-blind and almost entirely dead, had entered the palace with his caravan of servants and jewel-draped daughters. Not even when the southern prince rode in with six tigers on golden chains. But when the two kings of Dravareth stepped into the throne room, the hush was immediate. Sharp. Frightened.
Everyone went still, like prey that knew better than to make sudden movements.
They walked in side by side—two storms carved into the shape of men. One of them, the colder one, had the kind of presence that made the air feel heavier. His face was hard. Sculpted. Cut from shadows and heat. His shoulder armor gleamed obsidian black, embossed with a snarling wolf and flickering flame—the crest of Dravareth, as dark and dangerous as the land they ruled.
But it was his eyes that stopped me. Even from across the throne room, they found me. And held. Like he knew I was there. Like I was the reason they had come.
And the other—his husband. Rhysand.
I'd heard the name whispered before, but names were one thing. Seeing him was another. If Lucan was fire and stone, Rhysand was ice and silk. He moved like a man who had never been afraid of anything. Like he'd seen the worst the world could offer and still decided to walk through it with elegance.
But there was something else in the way they walked. Something unspoken and intimate. As though the space between them was its own language.
I didn't look away, not like the others. I wasn't afraid.
I was… curious.
And something deeper than that.
I didn't have a name for it yet.
"Princess," Lira whispered beside me as she touched my sleeve. "It's time."
I turned, my breath catching as I blinked away the thoughts still echoing through my head. The room had started moving again. The noise returning. I hadn't even noticed.
I nodded once and followed Lira's careful steps back into the spotlight.
The grand hall was alive now, filled with nobles and delegates, music drifting from the upper balconies where the minstrels played behind gauzy curtains. Every inch of the palace glittered—walls draped in crimson banners, chandeliers heavy with glass and firelight, tables lined with dishes so opulent I wondered who would dare eat from them.
And at the center, the long feast table stretched like a spine across the chamber, the seat of every powerful man in the realm—and those beyond it.
Including them.
The kings.
My heart quickened.
I stepped forward with the grace drilled into me since childhood. My dress swayed with the soft rustle of silk—deep blue, almost black, threaded with silver leaves that caught the candlelight as I walked. My crown sat light and fragile atop my head, pinned carefully into the braid woven through my curls.
I smiled. I bowed. I did everything I had been taught.
But my mind was somewhere else.
Each king and prince was introduced to me as I was guided to the front of the hall. My father stood tall at my side, hand heavy on my shoulder, his smile thin and tired from hours of false politeness. I could see the cracks forming beneath it. The way his jaw clenched tighter with every new face. He was afraid—not of these suitors, but of what this celebration could cost him.
"King Edrian of Solhare," the herald called out, and I curtsied as the old man took my hand, kissed it with shaking lips, and declared something I didn't really hear.
"Prince Daerel of Valtara."
"Lord Althos of the North Steppe."
One after another, they came. Some old. Some young. One with too much perfume, one with too many teeth. All of them gazing at me as if I were a prize on a pedestal, not a person with blood and thought and choice.
I smiled at them all.
I lied with my face.
Because none of them were him.
My eyes drifted again, again, toward the end of the table. They were seated there—Lucan and Rhysand—like kings in exile, distant from the rest but impossible to ignore.
They hadn't looked away either.
Lucan's gaze was fixed, unreadable, a storm behind glass. Rhysand leaned back slightly in his chair, calm but sharp-eyed, watching everything like he could pull the whole room apart if he wanted to.
Why were they here?
Why were they watching me?
"Your Majesty," I heard my father say, voice stiff as he stepped toward the end of the table. He was welcoming them. Finally.
But he didn't want to. I could see it in every inch of him.
King Alaric bowed—but only just enough to call it polite. His jaw was locked, his posture forced. "We welcome the… esteemed rulers of Dravareth," he said, every word like iron between his teeth. "May your presence at this gathering be remembered… favorably."
The silence that followed felt louder than a hundred trumpets.
Lucan did not bow.
Neither did Rhysand.
But they nodded. A single tilt of the head. Regal. Controlled.
Tense.
My father turned away quickly, as if their presence burned his eyes. I could feel the air shifting again, whispers already forming behind fans and wine cups.
"They're dangerous," Lira said softly at my side, her voice a breath against my ear as we moved to our seats.
"Then why invite them?" I asked.
"They weren't invited," she whispered.
I looked at her, startled.
"They arrived without notice. No formal declaration. No envoy. They came because they chose to. And no one dared turn them away."
I looked back across the room, across all the gold and velvet and polished lies, to the two figures at the end of the table who didn't belong here—and didn't care.
And all I could think was, at rgat moment, I could not think much byt all j could think of as them and them and them two and the two of them and could not stop thinking of them and them
What do they want?
And why do I feel like part of me already knows?