Page 148 of The Sun King's Noon

And Elara. The first babe who’d been placed in Richard’s arms. Who had held screaming matches with Father, having inherited his quick temper. Elara, who dedicated so much ofherself to teaching young mages, whose smirk made the most arrogant dukes pale. His fiery sister.

A cell with no windows. Her hair hacked short. Her shackles rusted.

Richard let his head hang over the railings. What could he do? His mother’s prophecies had a tendency to come true—perhaps not always in the shape one expected, but in some manner, always, eventually.

Exceptions had existed, but they’d been rare. A one-in-a-thousand event.

There was also the fact that his mother, his poor mother, had carried these prophecies.

Richard’s heart wrenched. No wonder she always seemed near tears on looking at him.

And Kaelen, too. No doubt Aralynn had instructed Kaelen to be silent, but regardless, Kaelen had given Richard peace. The knight had permitted Richard years of not knowing, had taken the prophecy onto his own back. There was a kindness in that.

Richard drained the tea, the dregs bitter on his tongue. Ignorance truly was bliss. Would that he could have remained ignorant longer.

“Good morn.”

Richard glanced over his shoulder. Kaelen beamed at him, scrubbed clean of blood and dressed in a woolly tunic. With a roll of his eyes, Richard returned to the sea.

Kaelen inched to his side. “Are you angry with me?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask what for?”

Richard scowled at the horizon. Kaelen knew exactly what for. “No.”

Kaelen snorted and hastily covered it with a cough as Richard shifted his glower onto him.

“I am not amused,” Richard said coldly.

Kaelen scrubbed a hand through his hair, causing his fringe to fall into his eyes. It only heightened Richard’s annoyance, for his fingers now itched to drag the fringe back up.

“I am sorry.” Kaelen shuffled closer. “I shall try not to scare you like that again.”

Richard sniffed. He could still remember the blood jetting from Kaelen’s abdomen, the way Kaelen’s eyes had gone distant. The terror had haunted his dreams. “See that you do not do it again.”

The ensuing pause stretched so long that Richard found himself discomfited. Odd. Kaelen usually filled silences.

Subtly, Richard peeked sideways. His brows shot up.

Kaelen was staring, with the unblinking concentration of a hound that had scented a hare, at Richard’s chest.

It took Richard a heartbeat to recall what he was wearing. Flint’s shirt—a tight, coarse thing he’d been forced into while his own tunic dried—that plunged in a deep ‘V’ down his sternum. The neckline had slipped further during his lean over the railing, exposing the line of his chest and—he realised wryly—the dusky edges of his nipples.

Kaelen’s jaw had slackened, colour rising high on his cheeks, climbing to the tips of his ears, and his throat worked in a slow swallow.

Richard scoffed. How extraordinary. A grown man, a knight of the realm, who had bested a giant spider the day before, now reduced to gawping at the sliver of pectorals. Was this what attraction meant? This licking of the lips, this mesmerisation, this inability to maintain conversation because of a less modest shirt.

It seemed exhausting. Distracting. Inconvenient, even. A wonder anyone in the world managed to keep their books balanced or their fields planted.

“My eyes, Kaelen, are up here.”

Kaelen’s head snapped up, his blush deepening.

“I—I beg your pardon—I did not—” Kaelen winced and rubbed his nape. “Forgive me—I—the wind—your shirt was—it had—I was not?—”

“I do not mind,” Richard said. Strange, but he truly did not. He’d rather Kaelen gawk at his body than at Ravi’s.