Rejected by His Heir, Chosen by His Crown

The war council over Lucian's letter was the first time I ever saw my father and Alaric agree, and it frightened me more than any of their disagreements had.

"You're not going," Alaric said.

"You're not going," Soren said, in the same breath, and the two of them looked at each other with the mutual surprise of men who'd spent weeks certain they shared nothing, and found they shared this: neither of them could stand to watch me walk into a room Lucian had built.

"It's the most obvious trap I've seen in forty years," my father went on. "He tells you he has Kellan, he tells you he knows everything, he invites you into a room of his own arranging — Seraphine, I have set that exact snare myself. You never, ever walk into the room a patient man built for you. You make him come out of it."

"He won't come out of it," I said. "That's the point of building one."