"I keep asking myself how this happened," Asher said, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. "How I love someone this deeply, and the matebond isn’t blessed by fate."

Ronan leaned on the stone railing. "Fated or not. It is powerful. Don’t let anyone say it wasn’t real. You know it. She knows it. The rest of us saw it every damn day."

Asher exhaled and it shuddered out of him, the kind of breath that a body releases when it’s been holding itself rigid for hours.

"You’re my oldest friend," Ronan continued, voice tight. "And you know I would burn down the world for you, right?"

"Yes. And I’d do the same for you," Asher replied, voice cracking.

"There’s something I need to tell you. Long overdue." Ronan exhaled and looked away for a second before continuing. "The last few months have been absolute agony. My brother, the best man I know, fell in love with my fated mate, who didn’t even know she was mine."

Asher froze against the railing. His grip tightened until his knuckles went the color of the stone beneath them. His breathing changed. Shorter. Faster. The breathing of a man whose body was trying to process information his mind was refusing to accept.

"You brought out a playful side of her," Ronan continued after a minute. "You made her laugh in a way that I don’t think I ever could."

"Everything I have, and everything I am, your father gave me. You’re a prince, Asher. She’s a princess. The world was designed for the two of you. I’m the boy who showed up at your gate with borrowed clothes and a dead family name."

His throat bobbed and his voice splintered. "All I can give her is me. And I know that doesn’t sound like much right now, but I will spend my life building something and earning it."

Ronan blinked away tears and his shoulders shook. "This isn’t how I wanted to tell you."

Asher turned away from him. Faced the courtyard. His shoulders were rigid and his jaw was working, grinding, the muscle jumping beneath the skin.

"Gods, when the matebond surfaced for her, that choice would’ve killed her." His voice was wrecked. Scraped raw. He pushed off the railing. Took two steps. Stopped. His hand went to his mouth, pressing hard, the way a man holds himself together when the alternative is coming apart in front of someone he respects too much to fall apart in front of.

He was quiet for so long that Ronan prepared himself for the worst. For the end of everything they’d built since they were boys. Instead, when Asher finally turned around, his face was wet and his eyes held something Ronan had never seen in them before. Acceptance. The kind that costs a man everything he has and leaves him standing anyway.

"If anyone’s going to have her who isn’t me. You’re the only person I’d ever approve of. And if you don’t plan on giving her everything, tell me. Because I will. I won’t hesitate to break this fated bond to be with her. But I want to respect her wishes and I don’t want her to carry the weight of her own fated bond broken either."

Ronan blinked, stunned. "I plan on giving her everything. My wife, if she’ll have me."

Asher wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "Until you give her your mark and she takes your name, she’s still mine in the eyes of this kingdom." His voice nearly gave out on the last word. He cleared his throat and looked at the sky because looking at Ronan meant looking at the man who was about to have the life Asher had spent months building, and he wasn’t ready for that yet. He might never be ready for that.

"You won’t need to ask twice."

Asher’s chin trembled. He caught it, locked his jaw, and kept talking through it the way soldiers talk through wounds they can’t afford to acknowledge yet. "Can you give me your word that you’ll treat her like I treated her? Or better?"

"You have my word." Ronan’s voice cracked. "And can you give me yours, that if I ever don’t, you’ll kick my ass?"

Asher gave a wet smile. "Obviously."

Dexmon watched two brothers on a balcony in the dark, one giving away the woman he loved and the other accepting the weight of what that meant.

The wind moved through the courtyard below.

Asher reached out and gripped the back of Ronan’s neck. Pulled him forward until their foreheads touched. Held him there.

✦✦✦

The next memory opened mid-stride.

Asher was walking through a corridor of white marble, Odette on his arm. She was talking. She had been talking for what felt like a geological era, and she would continue talking until the sun consumed the earth or until Asher threw himself from a balcony, whichever came first.

"I’ve had the portraits in the main hall rearranged. Your mother’s was taking up the entire west wall, which is excessive for a dead woman. I moved it to the servant’s corridor near the kitchens," Odette was saying. "I also had her jewelry moved to my chambers. A shame to have all of those pieces sitting in a box collecting dust. The emerald set is stunning on me. You’ll see at dinner."

Dexmon watched his younger self nod. The nod of a man who had stopped listening three corridors ago and was running on the fumes of obligation.

"I rearranged your study. Your desk was facing the window, which is impractical. You were staring outside instead of working. I turned it toward the wall."

"I face the window because I like the view."

"You face the window because you like watching the courtyard. I know what’s in the courtyard, Asher. Or rather, who walks through it every afternoon. You and I both know it."

Asher didn’t respond or react. He was too busy pretending the hollow pit in his chest was grief he could walk off, and that the scent of forest and moonfire that still clung to the corners of his memory would eventually fade.

It wouldn’t.