Rejected by His Heir, Chosen by His Crown

Lucian moved, and I moved faster, because I'd spent fifty chapters learning that the half-second is the only thing you ever actually own.

I got between him and Kellan before I'd decided to. It was a stupid thing to do — I had no weapon, no plan, nothing but the certainty that whatever Lucian's hand was reaching for, it was going to finish the man who'd just spent himself to save me, and I was done, so entirely done, letting people pay my bills in their own blood.

And Lucian stopped.

He stopped with his hand halfway to the little brass bell on the table — not a knife, a bell, a summons for men who were already coming — and he looked at me standing over Kellan's ruined chair with my empty hands up like they could stop anything, and he did the most frightening thing he'd done all night.

He sat back down.