doing something wrong, but he didn’t know what. He glanced at the owl, but she was smiling at her friend. And though he didn’t want his eyes to follow, he couldn’t help it—they were drawn like a moth to a flame, and what a bright spot she was. Lyana. Standing there in an amethyst dress embroidered with diamonds, her face framed by the golden trim of her cream overcoat, highlighting the natural warmth of her skin.
“What were you two doing?” Xander asked, mirth evident in his tone.
Rafe suddenly remembered the dirt and the sweat, how much a mess the two of them must have looked compared to the crown prince and his princess in matching finery, pristine as royals should be. “I was, uh, teaching Cassi some swordplay.” He couldn’t help noticing how Lyana tossed a confused glance at her friend, but he cleared his throat and straightened his spine, refocusing on his brother. “You?”
“The usual,” Xander smoothly replied with a shrug. “Breakfast with my mother. Meetings with the advisors. Now supper with the traders.”
His eyes were shining in a way that belied the casual tone of his words. As they flicked to the woman by his side, Rafe knew why. He was proud of his mate, proud to show her off to his people, proud to be standing with someone they would love instead of someone they had shunned.
Rafe gritted his teeth, nodding as words escaped him.
“Well, we should probably be going. We’re running late,” Xander said to his mate with a gently prodding expression. She started, forgetting where she was for a moment, but followed him as he maneuvered around Rafe, whose feet were rooted to the ground. Cassi walked on, either unconcerned or unaware that her guide had become motionless.
Rafe waited a moment longer, listening to his brother’s footsteps, each fading sound like a premonition of things to come. His heart sank deeper and deeper into the hollows of his chest.
He’d always known that things would be different after the courtship trials.
He’d always known his brother having a mate would change things.
But he had never realized how much until now. This insignificant moment had somehow flipped his world. It was the beginning of the end.
For the first time, he began to realize that Xander didn’t need him anymore. Not really. He had someone else by his side, someone better. A princess instead of a bastard—a trade up in anyone’s eyes. And it was only a matter of time before his brother saw how much of a useless burden Rafe had become—with the rumors, the strange looks, and the whispers in the dark, which hadn't ended as he'd hoped, but had instead strengthened.
“Uh, Rafe?” Cassi called. She was standing at the end of the hall, her arms crossed once more. “You’re supposed to be showing me where to go?”
“Right,” he muttered, taking a deep breath. “Right.”
Don’t be a fool, he thought for the second time that day as he hurried toward the owl and turned the corner, leading her. Xander isn’t going to forget you. You’re his brother. He loves you, no matter what. Of course he does.
But as he dropped Cassi off at her room and returned to the hall alone, the idea had become harder to swallow. And before he could stop himself, he found he was racing to the nearest balcony and jumping over the edge, wings catching him as he fell, pumping against the wind that whipped around the edge of the isle.
Rafe floated below the castle, to the rooms underground—rooms for the servants and the guards, and then rooms no one mentioned anymore. He didn’t stop until he reached the lowest level carved into the rock, now nothing more than a burnt-out crisp. A thick layer of ash stubbornly coated the surfaces even after more than a decade. He landed on the balcony outside the remnants of his mother’s room, pausing in the same spot he always did, scuffing his boots over old footprints and forming new ones in the dust. Even after all these years, he couldn’t step inside, not fully. Every time he tried, the memory of that snarl, the overwhelming heat, and the acrid scent of their burning flesh, still so strong in the stagnant air, stopped him.
Instead, he walked to the edge and sat so his feet dangled and his wings shrouded him like the curtains that used to hang there. When the corners of his eyes began to sting, he blamed it on the wind and closed them.