Now he couldn’t wait to be rid of it.

Every time his body sank into the cushions, he felt the darkness reaching up, folding its arm around him. Every time his mind slid toward sleep, the shadows were there to meet him.

These days Rhy rose early, desperate for the light.

It didn’t matter that he’d spent the better part of the night holding vigil in the streets, didn’t matter that his head was cloudy, his limbs stiff and sore and aching with the echo of someone else’s fight. The lack of sleep worried him less than what he found in his dreams.

The sun was just cresting the river as Rhy woke, the rest of the palace still likely folded in their troubled sleep. He could have called a servant—there were always two or three awake—but instead he dressed himself, not in the princely armor or in the formal red-and-golds, but in the soft black cut he sometimes wore within the interior rooms of the palace.

It was almost an afterthought, the sword, the weapon at odds with the rest of his attire. Maybe it was Kell’s absence. Maybe it was Tieren’s sleep. Maybe it was the way his father grew paler by the day, or maybe he’d simply grown used to wearing it. Whatever the reason, Rhy took up his royal short sword, fastened the belt around his hips.

He made his way absently to the salon, his sleep-starved mind half expecting to find the king and queen taking breakfast, but of course it was empty. From there he wandered toward the gallery, but turned back at the first sounds of voices, low and worried and wondering questions to which he didn’t have the answers.

Rhy retreated, first to the training rooms, filled with the exhausted remains of the royal guard, and then to the map room, in search of his father, who wasn’t there. Rhy went to ballroom after ballroom, looking for peace, for quiet, for a shred of normalcy, and finding silvers, nobles, priests, magicians, questions.

By the time he wandered into the Jewel, he just wanted to be alone.

Instead, Rhy Maresh found the queen.

She was standing at the center of the massive glass chamber, her head bowed as if in prayer.

“What are you doing, Mother?” The words were said softly, but his voice echoed through the hollow room.

Emira raised her head. “Listening.”

Rhy looked around, as if there might be something—or someone—he hadn’t noticed. But they were alone in the vast chamber. Beneath his feet, the floor was marked with half-finished circles, the beginnings of spells made when the palace was under attack and abandoned once Tieren’s spell had taken hold, and the ceiling rose high overhead, blossoms winding around thin crystal columns.

His mother reached out and ran her fingers along the nearest one.

“Do you remember,” she said, her voice carrying, “when you thought the spring blossoms were all edible?”

His steps sounded on the glass floor, causing the room to sing faintly as he moved toward her. “It was Kell’s fault. He’s the one who insisted they were.”

“And you believed him. You made yourself so sick.”

“I got him back, though, remember? When I challenged him to see who could eat the most summer cakes. He didn’t realize until the first bite the cooks had made them all with lime.” A soft laugh escaped at the memory of Kell resisting the urge to spit it out, and getting ill into a marble planter. “We got into a fair amount of mischief.”

“You say that as though you ever stopped.” Emira’s hand fell away from the column. “When I first came to the palace, I hated this room.” She said it absently, but Rhy knew his mother—knew that nothing she said or did was ever without meaning.

“Did you?” he prompted.

“What could be worse, I thought, than a ballroom made of glass? It was only a matter of time before it broke. And then one day, oh, I was so angry at your father—I don’t remember why—but I wanted to break something, so I came in here, to this fragile room, and pounded on the walls, the floor, the columns. I beat my hands on the crystal and the glass until my knuckles were raw. But no matter what I did, the Jewel would not break.”

“Even glass can be strong,” said Rhy, “if it is thick enough.”

A flickering smile, there and then gone, and there again, the first one real, the second set. “I raised a smart son.”

Rhy ran a hand through his hair. “You raised me, too.”

She frowned at that, the way she had at his quips so many times before. Frowned in a way that reminded him of Kell, not that he would ever say so.

“Rhy,” she said. “I never meant—”

Behind them, a man cleared his throat. Rhy turned to find Prince Col standing in the doorway, his clothing wrinkled and his hair mussed, as though he’d never been to bed.

“I hope I am not interrupting?” said the Veskan, a subtle tension in his voice that set the prince on edge.

“No,” answered the queen coolly at the same time Rhy said, “Yes.”

Col’s blue eyes flicked between them, clearly registering their discomfort, but he didn’t withdraw. Instead he stepped forward into the Jewel, letting the doors swing shut behind him.

“I was looking for my sister.”

Rhy remembered the bruises around Cora’s wrist. “She isn’t here.”

The Veskan prince gave the room a sweeping look. “So I see,” he said, ambling toward them. “Your palace really is magnificent.” He moved at a casual pace, as if admiring the room, but his eyes kept flicking back toward Rhy, toward the queen. “Every time I think I’ve seen it all, I find another room.”