Clear thought hadn’t entered his brain until he’d heard Caelan’s voice on the wind, calling for him. Drayce had been sure he was hallucinating or maybe he’d died. He hadn’t cared. So long as he had Caelan.
Except Caelan was staring at him in horror and saying those horrible words.
You lied to me. You said you told me everything, but you lied.
Drayce squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed against the lump in his throat. It had been three months by his best guess since he’d heard Caelan’s voice, and that memory still sliced through him as fresh as that day. He knew all about the people who lied to Caelan and tried to use him for their own advantage. Drayce had been the one person Caelan could trust and he’d taken a great deal of pride in that.
But he couldn’t have told Caelan the truth, no matter how much he’d wanted to. Every day with Caelan had been filled with anxiety. A nagging fear that day would be the day that Caelan discovered the truth and banished Drayce from his life forever.
Sighing, Drayce forced his brain to let go of those dark memories. There was no denying it. He was homesick. He longed for Erya and Stormbreak. The Isle of Stone had never been a true home. From the moment of his birth, he’d been an unwanted spare. An unlucky omen.
When word had reached his father that Queen Amara had given birth to a child at last and that he’d need his own protector, Drayce had prayed to all the old, dead gods to give him the job, but he never said a word to his father. He was sure if he’d even breathed a word of his desire to Masaru, he wouldn’t have been given the task.
No, Masaru had preferred to think he was punishing Drayce by sending him away permanently, and Drayce was happy to let him live in that delusion.
If only he’d remained on Mount Langbo. If he’d shifted to his human form and talked to Caelan rather than panicking and flying to his family’s manor because he’d broken his vow, maybe he wouldn’t be in this mess. But he’d been heartsick and scared, so he’d run to the worst place in the world for him.
And now he was stuck in prison. Probably awaiting execution.
Caelan would never know how sorry he was for keeping this secret from him. He’d never know how much he’d been loved by his best friend.
At the far end of the large stone room filled with cells, metal whined and screamed as the door was pulled open to allow someone inside. Probably the guard tasked with bringing him food and water. They allowed him to shift into his human form for an hour once a day so he could eat, drink, and use the meager facilities. Other than that, it was the only company he’d received since his father had ordered him locked up.
Drayce didn’t bother to lift his head as the footsteps drew closer. As far as he knew, the other cells in this part of the prison were all empty. He had a feeling his father wanted as few people as possible knowing that his failure of a son had returned after breaking his vow to remain hidden from the world.
Right now, he preferred to be hidden from everyone on the Isle of Stone. He didn’t care if he never saw another soul if the person on the other side of those black metal bars wasn’t going to be Caelan Talos.
“Dishonor,” the one person who Drayce dreaded seeing more than his father hissed.
He clenched his jaw to hold in his own hiss and reluctantly lifted his head to see his older brother standing outside his cell, his upper lip curled with a too-familiar look of disgust. Gods, he hated Shinobu. He hated his brother with every fiber of his being.
Shinobu had been a constant source of pain, frustration, and embarrassment for as long as Drayce could remember. He was pretty sure Shinobu had hated him before Drayce was even born, and Shinobu’s happiest day was when Drayce had flown away for what they’d all assumed would be for the last time.
Drayce glared at the man, who didn’t appear as if he’d changed much in the past decade. He was still taller than Drayce by several inches with silvery white-blond hair where Drayce’s was closer to gold. It had always made his brother appear colder and more untouchable. Shinobu had liked to call it a princely paleness even though their people didn’t have kings and princes.
If anything, Shinobu’s face had grown harder and more angular, as if his brother had been carved out of frozen granite. At the very least, his heart had been.
There was no reason for him to pay attention to anything his brother had to say. He was tucking his nose back under his long, black tail when Shinobu proved him wrong.