The winter of King Rowan’s twentieth year of reign.

  Snow battered the palace walls, rattling the shutters like bones in the wind. Icicles hung jagged from the eaves, catching the faint glow of the braziers within.

  Inside the royal chamber, servants moved swiftly, carrying blankets, trays, and steaming basins of water. Physicians leaned over the bed, shaking their heads, adjusting pillows, murmuring instructions to one another.

  The king was dying.

  Forty-year-old King Rowan lay beneath thick quilts, his face pale, his chest rising and falling with effort. His hands trembled atop the covers as he reached for the parchment before him.

  He read the words in his mind once more.

  By birth and by law, the crown passes to my eldest son, Alaric.

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  His firstborn. The boy sent to the frontier at ten years old.

  Rowan closed his eyes.

  The chamber fell silent. No one spoke. The servants continued their work; the physicians focused on their instruments. Only the crackle of the fire filled the room.

  Rowan’s thoughts drifted backward.

  He saw Lysandra, his first queen, standing beside him on the cold palace stones. Her hair caught the firelight; her olive-colored eyes shone with fearless laughter. She had been eighteen when they met, and that first glance had melted something deep within his heart.

  He married her that same year, believing they would rule the kingdom together. He had promised to love her and care for her until death parted them.

  He remembered the warmth of her hand, the curve of her smile, the sound of her laughter echoing through the halls.

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  He remembered the day treason was whispered. Her entire family was arrested and executed. She had faced it without fear.

  “Spare the boy,”she had said, pale as a candle flame flickering in the wind, yet her voice remained firm. “If you must cut down the tree, do not salt the earth.”

  Then she slit her own throat in front of him.

  He could still feel the heat of her blood splashing across his face and neck.

  He had not meant for her to die, even after what her family had been accused of.

  What had he expected of her?

  To fall at his feet and beg for mercy he had already decided not to grant?

  But how could she keep sleeping beside the man who ordered the slaughter of her kin?

  He had promised her.

  And yet, her family had been too powerful, too close to the throne. When the rumors began to spark, he obeyed his fear, and the council’s pressure.

  It had not been about truth.

  It had been about possibility.

  If her father and brothers had wished to take his throne, they could have.

  Rowan’s chest tightened.

  His second queen, Marielle, had given him another son Cassian, only a year old now.

  Rowan despised his own brothers, Edric and Valen. They had wanted the crown too desperately. They had tried to poison him, to disgrace him, to turn their father against him —anything to strip him of his birthright: to be the king.

  They had failed.

  He should have killed them long ago. But it had been the old king’s dying wish to keep them alive. The old king could not bear to see his sons slaughter one another, even after everything.

  So Rowan had exiled them instead. Their chapter had ended. They no longer had power.

  But power could return.

  If he passed the throne to his one-year-old son, they would use the child as a puppet. A tool. A weapon.

  He could not place the kingdom in their hands.

  Alaric was the only choice.

  His firstborn. His blood. Tempered by exile and hardship. Strong enough to inherit. Wise enough to survive.

  Rowan’s hand shook as he lifted the quill. Slowly, deliberately, he wrote:

  By birth and by law, the crown passes to my eldest son, Alaric.

  He pressed the royal seal into the wax. It cracked beneath his trembling hand.

  Servants carried the parchment immediately to the court. The decree would travel swiftly, announcing to the kingdom what he could no longer speak aloud.

  Rowan lay back and closed his eyes.

  The firelight danced against the walls, and in it he saw Lysandra once more. He could almost feel her fingers brushing his, hear her laughter drifting through the stone corridors.

  Was she calling him to follow?

  Surely that was impossible, after all he had done.

  What stood between them had been a tragedy—born of fear, of power, of love twisted into ruin.

  His breathing slowed.

  With his final breath, he wished only that his sons would not inherit this misery.

  And then he was still.