“You look like hell.”

Kitt’s eyes skip over the scarlet splotches staining my shirt, courtesy of the Imperial he doesn’t need to know I buried.

For her.

Borderline treasonous at best.

Pathetic at worst.

The king’s scrutiny finally meets mine, our eyes locking, laced with amusement. Familiarity forms a smile on my lips involuntarily, simply at the feeling of being brothers. Brothers who don’t have titles wedged before their names. Brothers who, for this blissful moment, ignore their allegiances tethered by blood.

It’s the first time he’s let me look at him in days. Really look at him.

He’s traded tears for tiredness, smiling eyes for haunted ones, accompanied by slightly sunken cheeks and a stubbled jaw. My inspection snags on the same wrinkled shirt I’ve seen the past three days—half-unbuttoned, sleeves splattered with ink.

“Yeah, well, you don’t look much better,” I say, something akin to a smile still surprising my lips.

Kitt blinks, taking in his stained hands and the smudged papers sprawled out before him as if seeing the scene for the first time. Then he sighs, slowly shuffling the papers he’s been so engrossed with into a sloppy pile. “I’ll be fine. Just a little tired, that’s all.”

“You are aware that there is a simple solution to that—correct?” I sound annoyingly timid as I try to walk the fine line between lightening the mood and attempting to talk some sense into him.

Kitt is different. We are different. I no longer know where my brother ends and my king begins.

When he doesn’t respond, I finish with a quietly concerned, “You should try to rest. Get some sleep.” I nod toward the worn leather seat he’s inherited. “I haven’t seen you leave that chair in days.”

“Sleep is for the dead.” The noise Kitt follows his blunt statement with can only be described as a choking scoff. “Sorry,” he half laughs, shaking his head with what seems to be amusement. “Too soon?”

I force a smile while facing what feels like a stranger. In another life, I can hear those same words falling from Kitt’s mouth, only they are lacking the bitter edge, the crazed crack of his smile. Grief has morphed him into a man I’m wary of.

“Fine,” I sigh, “sleep is for the dead. Though it doesn’t seem you’re living much either.” My eyes search his, pleading in a way I never would with words. “You haven’t left the study since your coronation. We could take a walk through the gardens, go see the queen.” I swallow at the thought of what grief has done to her. “The physicians say she’s getting worse. She hasn’t left her bed, and they fear… They fear there may not be much time left.”

He stills, silent long after my suggestion. I shouldn’t be surprised by his reluctancy. Kitt has no bond with my mother. Because she is exactly that—my mother. Not his.

Clearing my throat, I quickly change the subject to more appealing endeavors. We could visit Gail in the kitchen. She won’t stop asking to see you until you eat one of her sticky buns—”

“I’m quite happy here, thank you.”

I blink at him. A kingly dismissal if I ever heard one.

I nod slowly, taking a step back toward the door. “Well, if there is nothing else…”

Your Majesty.

I swallow the words before I can spit them out at the end of the sentence. My hand reaches for the door, ready to make my escape—

“Is that her blood?”

I falter, turning to face him.

His green gaze is fixed on the splotches soaking my shirt. I’m still, silent for a long moment, simply allowing him to study me while I try to decipher what it is looming behind his eyes.

When I finally speak, it’s the question I’m avoiding answering myself that falls from my lips. “Would you be more disappointed if it was, or if it wasn’t?”

He swallows. Takes a deep breath. Smiles in a way that is anything but happy. “I don’t know.” Another long, lingering silence. “You?”

“I don’t know.”

Pathetic.

“Is it?” Kitt doesn’t look at me as he says it. “Hers, I mean.”

I sigh, suddenly tired at the reminder of this morning. “No.”

Relieved? Disappointed? It seems I suddenly cannot tell the difference between the two as I say that seemingly simple word.

“I see,” Kitt mutters. “But she was there, I take it?”

“She was. I forced her out of the house.” Kitt quirks a brow before I finish, “Burnt it to the ground.”

“I see.”

We watch each other warily. She is a topic better left untouched, and yet, she’s never further than a thought away. Torture for the two of us.

“The blood?” Kitt nods toward me expectantly.

“Belongs to the Imperial she stabbed. Killed him near Loot.”

There’s that lifeless laugh again. “She does have a nasty habit of stabbing people, doesn’t she?”

I clear my throat, careful not to cross the line I no longer know where to find when it comes to Kitt. “Yes, well, so do I. And she didn’t escape unharmed—I made sure of that.”

“So,” Kitt drawls in a tone all too familiar. I see Father reflected in his gaze, reincarnated in his words. “What are you telling me, Enforcer?”

I stiffen slightly. “I believe she is headed to the Scorches, attempting to make it across to either Dor or Tando. Though I’m not sure she will. Then again, she does also have a nasty habit of staying alive.” My tone is flat, embodying the Enforcer he wishes me to be. “I will ready some men and desert horses to head into the Scorches after her. We will leave as soon as we are able.” I pause. “Your Majesty.”

Dammit. I just couldn’t help myself, could I?

Kitt studies me, seemly less than unsettled by the title. Rather, curious. “And then you’ll bring her to me.”

I nod.

“Will you?”

I stare it him, breathing slowly. “Do you have reason to believe I won’t?”

Kitt shrugs a shoulder before leaning back to cross ink-stained arms over his wrinkled shirt. “It’s just that, well, I know your… history.”

I stiffen. We eye each other, silently communicating the one thing we never used to utter aloud. Kitt’s comment was subtle, but his lack of faith in my fulfilling his command was anything but.

My reply is distant. “That is different. And you know it.”

“Is it?” Kitt’s tone is unsettlingly innocent. “You had no attachment to those children, and yet, you still spared them their punishments despite their crimes.”

“Kitt—” I start before he abruptly cuts me off.

“Look, I’m not saying that saving children was the wrong thing to do.” He laughs, devoid of humor. “I’m not a monster. Banishing the Ordinaries with their families instead of outrightly executing them was a kindness, however small. But”—his eyes darken—“you repeatedly disobeyed Father’s orders. Again and again.”

I sigh through my nose, exasperated. At the mention of Father, I’ve lost the argument before it’s even begun. In Kitt’s eyes, nothing I say can justify an action against the previous king.

“I always obeyed orders,” I sigh. “And I always will. That was an exception.”

“Was?” Kitt repeats, his expression equally scrutinizing and skeptical. “What, do you not plan to continue that exception because I am king? Because I know?

It’s a struggle to not openly gape at him. “Do you want me to execute the children, then?” My chest heaves, heart hammering against sore ribs. “By all means, just say the word and it will be done, my king.”

Shit.

I bite my tongue hard enough to focus on the burst of pain and not the surge of anger sweeping through me. The last thing I want is to view Kitt as nothing more than my king, to treat him how I treated the one before.

Kitt is easy to love until he begins resembling the father who had little love for me.

“Kai.” The king’s harsh gaze softens with his voice. “I know this isn’t exactly a simple order to follow. I suppose I’m just… paranoid. I’ve witnessed you go against orders in the past.” At the look I give him, he hastily adds, “For good reason. Which is why I worry when asking you to bring her back to me.” His eyes find mine, full of an emotion I can’t determine. “And what better ‘good reason’ to disobey orders than your feelings for her.”

We stare at each other, eyes locked and throats lodged with unspoken words. I want to protest, beg my mouth to open and spew a convincing string of words that contradict his accusation. But he’s right, and we both know it. My feelings are what freed her in the first place.

The thought jolts me, has me jumping to the conclusion that Kitt knows this, knows that I already let her go once—and he resents me for it. But nothing on his placid face proves this, and I bury the thought before it can do the same to me.

“This can’t be easy for you, either,” I say quietly, testing the rocky water that is Kitt’s flood of feelings for the same girl.

He almost laughs. “Oh, so now we’re going to talk about this?”

We’d skirted around the touchy topic even before she decided to tear the tendons of our father’s neck with the very dagger I have strapped to my side. She was a risk, something we avoided voicing as though that could stop her from driving a wedge between us.

Falling for her was fatal.

“Whatever I felt for her died the day she killed him,” Kitt says simply.

Lies.

I’ve been telling myself the very same thing, convincingly calling it the truth.

“I know the feeling,” I nod.

Lies.

We eye each other, both content to drown in our shared delusions. But we say nothing else, not bothering to confront the fact that we’re lying to both ourselves and each other.

“I will bring her back to you, Kitt.” My voice is quiet, earnest. “Before I was your Enforcer, I was your brother. My loyalty is to you and no one else.” I’m silent for a long moment, allowing my words to sink in. “She killed my father too, you know.”

More silence stretches between us.

“Alive,” Kitt says finally. “Bring her to me alive.”

His tone doesn’t suggest that this is exactly a mercy.

Pulling off the thick ring I was given the day I became Ilya’s Enforcer, I place it on his desk. “Give it back to me when I’ve earned your trust again.”