Clarity struck me, bright as a bolt. It pulled my spine straight and tilted my chin high.

It was not Agatha whose help I needed to get out of Fort Linum.

It was the king of Varya’s.

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King Theodore took slow steps into the hall, and the crowd split like water around a stone to let him pass. His chamber was on the same level as my own, and if I knew Nemea at all, he’d put him in the worst accommodations the fort had to offer. A small, drafty chamber at the northeastern corner, with crumbling exterior stones that had been harassed by the winds since the day they’d been stacked.

Flanked by his guards, Theodore started up the stairs. His every movement was filled with muscled grace, and when he neared the top, our gazes crashed together. His eyes rounded, and I could only imagine how shocking I must have looked. Severe in my black wedding gown, dark hair windblown, blood smeared on my cheeks, smattering my chest like gruesome freckles. He still beheld me with disapproval nearing abhorrence, but his gaze dipped to my injured hand, which I held protectively against me, and his full lips flattened in what looked like concern.

He might help. He might say yes.

“May we speak?” I whispered, before he could stride away from me, down the northern wing.

He paused for what felt like a lifetime, but finally, reluctantly, he dipped his chin in the barest of nods, then continued toward his chamber. I didn’t miss the tension strung through his body, the lingering anger that trailed him like smoke. He was everything Nemea had always said he was—haughty and honorable and righteously indignant—but I did not wish to break him of those qualities, like Nemea did.

I wished to use them.

The crowd in the entryway below me began to disperse. Some made their way out into the courtyard; some huddled together toward the throne room. I made my way down the hall on what felt like new legs. Four Varian guards flanked the farthest door. Their golden armor glinted in a pool of light that slipped through the narrow window beside them. As I reached the end of the hall, one of the guards swung the door wide for me to enter.

“Thank you.” I took a tentative step inside.

A fire popped in the small hearth. The hinges whined as the door shut behind me. The chamber was only a bed, a wooden chair by the fire, and a single window that King Theodore peered out of with his back to me.

“There’s a cloth and water by the door,” he said, his voice a deep, warm resonance in his chest.

“I’m all right, Your Majesty, thank you.”

“Wash quickly. I’ll wait.”

I bit back my protest and wrung out the cloth. It came away from my cheeks with fat smears of pink. There was something in the action of it, in being commanded to clean up the blood he’d spilled on me, that made me feel almost as insignificant as I did with Nemea. The feeling hardened my jaw.

I finished cleaning and cleared my throat.

“Speak,” he said.

“Your Majesty, thank you for giving of your time—”

“No.” He locked his hands behind his back. “Speak about why you are here.”

I gulped down the ball of nerves that clogged my throat. “I—I came to ask for your help.”

He blew out a long breath. “Agatha sent you, didn’t she?”

“I beg your pardon?” I shook my head. “No. Agatha has no idea I’m here. Why would she send me?”

Finally, he turned. The firelight accentuated his strong nose, the sharp line of his jaw and cheekbone, and I could not help but stare. He was captivating, even more so with the way his fury still sparked in the air around him. “She came to me last night after the feast. She said it was imperative you leave the fort before your wedding.”

“I didn’t know,” I said. “Did she tell you… did she explain why?”

The kingdom of Varya was a peaceful one. Sirens lived among the ancestral Varians there, but still, the thought of anyone knowing my secret while I stood upon Serafi soil filled me with abject terror.

“She did. But the revelation that you’re a Siren was no shock. I told you I knew you.”

That insouciant surety of his gnawed at me. I longed to ask him more, to ask him how, but his gaze turned incisive. I stilled while he dissected the shape of my eyes, my nose, my mouth. His gaze lingered on my lips for a breath. Then another. As he stared, he slipped into some faraway place.

“Your Majesty,” I said softly, trying to bring him back. “What answer did you give Agatha?”

He blinked, then cleared his throat. “Despite my many concerns about your current arrangement, I told her no.”

“No.” An ugly emotion surged through me. “May I ask why?”

“For one, you didn’t seem like you wished to leave.”

“Forgive me, but how could you presume to know what I want?”

A deep furrow carved his brow. “Lady Imogen, I have eyes. And though I cannot fathom the pairing—a secret Siren and her hunter—you couldn’t keep your hands from your fiancé last night. The captain spent half the evening with his lips on your neck.”

I prayed it was too dark for him to see the rush of embarrassment that heated my cheeks. “The captain also spent half the morning telling me of his plans to force a blood bond between us.” He froze at that. “You saw how easily he sliced my hand in that ritual room. How thoughtlessly he hurt me.”

Anger seemed to reignite within him. The heat of it filled his eyes. “Agatha left me with the impression that your identity is unknown here—that you both take great pains to keep it that way. How does the captain know what you are?”

I pressed a hand to my chest where my heart thudded against my ribs. “He… did not know until last night.”

“Before the feast or after?”

“After.”

His patience snapped. “Tell me plainly how he knows.”

I hesitated, and he gave me a withering look. It surprised me, how desperately I wanted his poor view of me to change.

He strode toward me and stood so close that I had to look up to meet his eye. “Answer me or leave.”

“I shifted,” I said suddenly. “In front of him.”

Confusion narrowed his gaze. “How is that possible? A Siren’s power is tied to the sea. You shouldn’t be able to change this far away from it.”

“I…” My eyes dropped to his chest. “There was… sea salt… on his skin.”

He paused. “On his skin?”

“Yes. And I… well… I tasted it.”

“You tasted—” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Are you without both honor and self-control? Giving your blood freely, and now this—” He paced away from me, mumbling to himself in a pious fit. “What kind of coward stays in this place, scraping to Nemea’s whims? You’re an imbecile to marry a man whose job it is to kill you.”

Fury filled me, alarming and hot, and I heard Nemea’s scathing voice in my head. It is easy to be good when you’re blessed by the bloody fucking Gods. “How dare you!” I balled my hands to fists so I wouldn’t shove them against his chest. “I belong to Nemea. What should I have done? Should I have told him I prefer to not marry? Tell me how you would treat a subject who denied you, Your Majesty.” But he didn’t. He merely watched me in quiet, wide-eyed shock as I went on. “I have twisted and broken myself to survive here. You could never understand what that is like—”

“You should have tried to leave a long time ago.”

“Yes,” I snapped. “I should have. But I am trying now.” I held his gaze. “Will you help me?”

We stood in tense, heavy silence, breaths speeding and mingling. Then he gave a frustrated grunt. “Give me your hand.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Let me close that cut.”

I looked down at my gouged palm. I’d been so angry I’d forgotten about it, but he hadn’t. He had the Great God Panos’s power over life, the power to grow and mend. Slowly, eyes locked with his, I extended my wounded hand. “This is not the help I’m requesting of you.”