Chapter 2

That one second of hesitation had cost me everything. My vanguard had been scattered. I had been dragged down into the slush by six imperial guardsmen, beaten senseless, and thrown into a cage of iron bars to be carted two hundred leagues south like a prize hog.

It was the most humiliating tactical blunder of my life. A veteran captain, outplayed by a bookish prince who had spent the last two years drowning in court intrigue.

"You shouldn't have been there, Julian," I said, my jaw tightening as he moved to my left wrist. "You aren't a field commander. You never were. You had no business leading that vanguard into the gorge."

Julian paused. His fingers rested lightly against the inner curve of my arm, where my blood hammered against his skin. A strange, unreadable shadow passed over his features—something dark and brittle, like ice about to give way under heavy boots.

"Someone had to bring you in, Rowan," he said quietly.

"And look what it bought you," I countered, gesturing with my chin toward his swollen knuckles, toward the darkened hallway beyond the cell door. "A parade. A week of cheers from the rabble. And now Alden is using my capture to tighten the noose around your neck. You brought the realm's most dangerous outlaw to the palace steps, and all it did was prove that Alden's court owns you."

Julian let out a breath that sounded half like a scoff and half like a sob. He leaned back on his heels, wiping his salve-coated fingers on a scrap of rag. In the flickering firelight, the fine lines of strain around his mouth made him look ten years older than his four-and-twenty winters.

"You think Alden is pleased with your capture?" Julian asked. His eyes met mine, bright and unnerving. "You think he wanted you here?"

"The man has been calling for my head since I burned his supply depots in the riverlands three years ago," I said flatly. "Of course he wants me here. He's going to string me from the Gate of Kings, and then he's going to turn to the council and ask why the prince who caught me can't even pay the city watch their back wages."

Julian didn't answer right away. He stood up slowly, smoothing the wrinkles from his tunic with a nervous, repetitive motion. The cell was cramped, but he paced its five-foot breadth with the agitated grace of a caged leopard.

"The public execution is set for three days from now," he said, staring at the small, iron-barred slit high in the stone wall that looked out onto the inner courtyard. Above us, the muffled sound of a trumpet signaled the midnight watch. "Alden demanded it. He wanted it tomorrow, but I... I managed to delay the decree. I cited the ancient rites of the Sunken Gods. Three days of purification before the axe falls."

"Three days," I repeated, watching the line of his back. "Generous."

"Rowan."

He turned around, his voice dropping into that raw, urgent cadence that always dismantled whatever armor I had left. He stepped back toward the bench, stepping close enough that the skirt of his velvet tunic brushed my leather breeches. The warmth radiating from him was a physical ache in the damp cold of the cell.

"You need to listen to me," Julian whispered, leaning down. His face was inches from mine. I could see the tiny gold flecks in his grey irises, the slight tremor in his bottom lip that he had never quite learned to hide under court masks. "When they bring you before the High Council tomorrow for the formal sentencing, you cannot provoke him. You cannot spit at Alden. You cannot boast. You must play the defeated dog, Rowan. Please."

A bitter laugh scraped out of my throat. "The defeated dog? You want the commander of the Vanguard to grovel before that fat butcher?"

"I want you to stay whole!" Julian snapped, the whisper breaking into a sharp, ragged hissing. He caught my tunic by the lapels, his knuckles digging into the worn wool. For a second, the prince was gone entirely; there was only Julian, frantic and terrified, pulling me toward him until I could feel the heat of his skin against my cheek. "If you provoke him, he will invoke the Lex Bellica. He will have you broken on the wheel before dawn, Rowan. In the courtyard, without a crowd, without a trial. He has the authority while the Emperor lies comatose, and I cannot stop him. Do you understand me? I cannot stop his guards if they decide to butcher you in this cell."

I didn't flinch. I let him hold me by the collar. With my hands bound, I couldn't wrap an arm around him, so I did the only thing I could: I leaned into his grip, resting my forehead against his chest, right over his racing heart.

He froze. Then, with a shuddering intake of air, his fingers loosened in my tunic, spreading out against my shoulders, sliding upward until his cool palm cupped the side of my neck. His thumb traced the scar along my jawline—a keepsake from an assassin's blade in a tavern five years ago, an evening he had spent patching me up while the blood soaked through his best doublet.

"I'm not going to die on their wheel, Jules," I murmured against his collar. The childhood diminutive slipped out before I could check it.

Julian’s breath hitched. His fingers tightened in the short hair at the nape of my neck, holding me against him with an almost desperate strength.

"You don't know Alden," Julian whispered into my hair. "You know battlefields, Rowan. You know men who charge with lances and fight for silver. You don't know the poison in this court. Every cup I drink from has to be tasted twice. Every servant who makes my bed was placed there by the Grand Duke's gold. My father is dying in a bedchamber surrounded by Alden's black-cloaks, and every morning I wake up wondering if this is the day they find a vial of nightshade in my cabinet and declare me a parricide."

The raw, bleeding truth of his words hit me harder than any blow from a warhammer.

I pulled back just enough to look into his face. Up close, the purple shadows beneath his eyes were bruises of pure exhaustion. The crown prince of Valenica was starving in his own palace, isolated, hunted by the very men sworn to serve him.

"Why didn't you run?" I asked, my voice low, gravelly with a protectiveness I had no right to feel. "When your father took ill, when Alden brought the Iron Watch through the river gates—why didn't you take horse and ride north? You knew where my camp was. You knew the Vanguard would have shielded you. We would have cut a path through the mountains to the Free Cities before Alden even realized his royal puppet was gone."

Julian stared at me, his eyes wide and terribly bright with unshed tears. He shook his head slowly, a bitter, fragile smile touching his lips.

"Run?" he whispered. "And leave this city to Alden? Leave the thousands of people who still pray for my father's line? Leave the kingdom to be carved up among the warlords?"

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