MARKED BY FATE: THE ALPHA PRINCE'S REGRET

Chapter Thirteen: Escort

I didn't stay inside.

Rhys called after me, but I was already gone. I pushed through the door and into the pale morning light. A dozen royal guards waited in the courtyard, their gold-and-black banners snapping in the wind. Kaelan stood in the center, unshifted, hands loose at his sides. He looked like surrender cost him nothing. But I could see now exactly how much it hurt him.

The captain of the guard swung down from his horse and strode toward Kaelan. He was broad-shouldered, cold-eyed, and didn't bother with ceremony.

"Prince Kaelan. You'll surrender your weapons and come with us to the capital, where the King's council will hear the charges against you."

"I understand," Kaelan said evenly. "I'll come without incident."

"Good." The captain's mouth curved, not quite a smile. "That'll make this easier."

The way he said it made my skin crawl.

I stepped forward before I even realized I was moving. My gift was raw and unpredictable, throbbing behind my eyes like a bruise. "Captain," I called, and every guard's eyes snapped to me at once. "What exactly are the charges against him?"

"That's a matter for the council," the captain said dismissively, not even looking at me directly.

"Answer her," Kaelan said sharply.

The captain's jaw ticked, some old deference to royal authority warring with obvious distaste. "Treasonous invocation of Crown Protection without royal sanction. Consorting with a known threat to Crown stability." His eyes flicked to me with open contempt. "Her."

"Then I'll come to the capital as well," I said. "To testify."

"Absolutely not," the captain said, at the same moment Kaelan said, "Ivy, no."

I ignored them both and looked past the captain to the guards behind him. I looked the way my gift had taught me to look at Serrin in the clearing. What I saw made my stomach drop.

Six of the twelve guards wouldn't meet my eyes.

Not out of deference. Out of guilt.

"You're not planning to bring him to trial at all," I said, my voice slow and cold. The truth bloomed in my chest, sharp and certain. "Are you?"

The captain's expression didn't change, but I saw it the smallest flicker, there and gone, in the muscle beside his eye.

"I don't know what you're implying," he said stiffly.

"I think you do." I stepped closer, ignoring Kaelan's sharp intake of breath beside me, ignoring Rhys's warning growl from the doorway behind us. "Tell me the truth. What happens to him on the road to the capital?"

The gift surged, hot and immediate, worse than it had been with Serrin. This time it felt like something tearing inside me, a raw scraping behind my eyes that made me gasp out loud.

The captain's face contorted, fighting the compulsion visibly, jaw clenched so tight I heard his teeth grind.

"There's no trial," he finally ground out, the words dragged from him like they were being physically extracted. "The King's orders were clear the moment Serrin Draveth's report reached the capital. Kaelan doesn't reach the council chambers. There's an ambush arranged eight miles down the eastern road made to look like Draveth loyalists retaliating for the border incident. A tragic accident. A prince who died defending the kingdom from a treacherous mate bond, instead of a prince who has to be publicly stripped and risk becoming a martyr for reform."

Silence exploded across the courtyard.

Kaelan had gone bone white. "My father ordered my death."

"Your father decided a dead prince was less dangerous to him than a living one asking uncomfortable questions," the captain said, and something like genuine regret flickered across his weathered face now that the truth had been torn loose. "I have a family in the capital, Your Highness. I didn't have a choice about my orders. I'm sorry."

Blood trickled from my nose. My vision swam at the edges, but I forced myself to stay upright. I forced myself to keep speaking through the ringing in my ears.

"Then don't follow them," I said. "You just told the truth in front of eleven witnesses and a royal heir. That's not something you can quietly bury anymore."

The captain's eyes moved slowly around the courtyard his own guards, several of them looking as shaken as he was, Rhys's warriors positioned at every vantage point, Kaelan standing very still and very pale in the center of it all.

"If I return to the capital having failed to carry out the order," the captain said slowly, "I'm as good as dead myself."

"Then don't return empty-handed," Kaelan said, finding his voice, something sharp and strategic cutting through the shock on his face. "Return with the truth. All of it. Witnessed, compelled, undeniable. My father ordered the murder of the Crown Prince to avoid a political embarrassment. That's not a rumor anymore, Captain. That's a confession, given freely in front of a dozen witnesses." His eyes hardened. "Bring that to the council instead. Let them decide what kind of king orders his own son's death rather than face a scandal."

The captain stared at him for a long, taut moment.

Then, slowly, he turned to his guards. "Stand down," he said. "We're not riding east."

A ripple of relief moved through several of the mounted guards. If I needed confirmation of how many of them knew what they were riding toward, I had it now.

I didn't get to feel any triumph in it.

My knees buckled as black spots swallowed my vision. The world tilted sideways one last time before Kaelan's arms caught me. Just like in the clearing. But this time, I heard his voice break as he said my name. I heard Rhys shouting for Mira. I heard the captain's urgent voice ordering someone to ride for a healer.

My last clear thought before the darkness took me was that I'd just handed Kaelan the one thing that could turn a private family betrayal into a public reckoning. Something that could unmake his father's entire reign.

And I had no idea if I'd just saved us all or started a war none of us were ready for.