Alaric Thornwhisper pressed his palm to the swamp queen's altar and felt his blood answer, as it had answered for three hundred years of his bloodline. A thread of gold light rose from under his skin. It bent toward the queen's throne, obedient, hungry. He wanted to break that thread. To do it, he needed to read the pact that made it. But no Thornwhisper had ever seen the pact's words. The queen kept them hidden, and a blood-oath cannot be broken by a man who does not know what it says. Tonight she had sent him to cut yellow lilies from the water's edge. The blooms flared like pale stars on their long stems. She boiled them for her spells. Alaric knelt in the mud and cut, and he thought about words he had never read. His father had died serving her. His father had never known what sentence had sold him. "You cut flowers for her now," a voice said. "How far the Thornwhispers have fallen." Alaric turned. Theron Nightblade stood among the reeds, white hair loose, a dagger resting easy in his hand. The queen's own bodyguard. Her cursed prince, bound tighter than Alaric himself. But he was smiling, and that was wrong. A bound man did not smile at the altar's errands. "She trusts you," Alaric said. "So walk away before I tell her you came here." "Tell her." Theron stepped closer. His purple eyes held no fear. "She curses me fresh each morning. One more word from you costs me nothing. But it could cost her everything." He crouched beside the cut lilies. "You want to break your pact. I want to watch her lose something she thinks she owns. Our wants point the same way." Alaric's heart kicked. "You know where she keeps the terms." "I stand guard over them." Theron turned his dagger. The blade caught the moon. "Every night I watch the vault where she locked the oath that binds your blood. She never thought her own guard would open it." "Why would you risk that for me?" "Not for you." Theron's smile sharpened. "To spite her. Follow." Alaric left the lilies in the mud and followed. The vault lay beneath the queen's roots, a chamber of black stone. Theron pressed his cursed hand to the lock, and it opened for him alone. Inside, on a slab, lay a scroll of stretched skin. Alaric unrolled it with shaking fingers. He read the pact at last. Every word. And one line stopped his breath. The oath did not bind the Thornwhisper bloodline forever. It bound them until a child of the line was born under the queen's own roof. Then the debt passed to that child, renewed for three more centuries. Alaric stared at the words. He now knew how to break the pact. He also knew the queen's spell this very night was meant to make him father such a child.