Rejected by His Heir, Chosen by His Crown

Soren's room had been glass and altitude — a place that said look how far above you I sit. Lucian's room said the opposite, and that was the first thing I understood about him, standing in the doorway of it: he had chosen, for the most powerful man in the drowned world, a low stone chamber below the waterline, warm, close, lit gold, comfortable as a held breath. No throne. No height. Two good chairs by a small fire and a table with a decanter on it and, in the third chair, not restrained, not guarded, Kellan.

They'd hurt him. I made myself look and not flinch, because he'd earned that much from me. One eye was gone to a white ruin under a clumsy dressing. The left hand — the writing hand, the hand that had held the chalk that had held the note — was bound in a way that told me there wasn't much left under the wrapping to save. He was grey and thin and he looked up at me with the one eye he had left and did the most Kellan thing possible, which was to smile like we were both late to a party neither of us wanted to attend.

"You shouldn't have come," he said.

"I know," I said. "Everyone keeps telling me."