The Blood Price

I bury my queen beneath a gray sky.

Days later, I know she was murdered. Poisoned wine from Kambria, designed to look like the Blight devouring the continent.

By dawn, my army rides south for blood, for justice, for the satisfaction of my blade at King Hagen's throat.

But Hagen is ready, and when I press my steel to his neck, he plays his final card.

The Blood Price. A life for a life. A bride for a bride. A queen for a queen.

He offers me Naia of Iafros, princess of a fallen kingdom, wrapped in sacrificial crimson, with sea-glass eyes and secrets burning behind them. Something inside me catches fire, something I thought had died long before my wife did.

I should take his head.

Instead, I take Naia, against every instinct, under the stricken gaze of my sons and the silence of an army that followed me here for vengeance, not this.

She is terrified of me. Every mile from the sea she fades a little more, staring into water like it holds answers I'm not meant to hear. And when a storm breaks and she walks into it — arms open, face to the sky, utterly unafraid — I see something in her that I have no name for. Something luminous and ancient and magnificent.

Something I will destroy kingdoms to protect.

That's when I realize. She isn't the Blood Price.

I am.

Gods help us both.