Page 173 of Sharpest Court

“—and I take full responsibility for the actions of my companions,” Keil continued, talking over me. Talking over Goren and Osana, too, who were adding their voices to my protest. None of us wanted him to take the blame for this. “I therefore ask that you release them,” he said, “alongside Lady Alissa.”

At that, Arun released a cool, cutting laugh. “I already reminded Lady Alissa that her Gallery immunity would not protect her from Ansoran authority. It now seems that I must remind you.” His eyes hardened. “If you believe I am releasing Lady Alissa, you don’t understand the situation.”

“No.” Keil raised his chin, looking more like a prince of Ansora than he ever had. “You don’t understand the situation.”

He unclenched his right hand. And from inside his fist, a golden necklace unspooled, the chain dangling from his index finger.

This was the necklace I’d seen on his writing desk, with the empty claw-pronged setting. The necklace he’d shifted out of my view.

Goren swore under his breath. Osana gaped. Even Arun appeared surprised, his jaw clenching with a quiet anger I couldn’t comprehend.

Keil nodded inexplicably toward my hip. To where I’d sheathed the golden hairpin he’d given me.

I gasped as Arun’s specter curled around the hairpin and raised it toward the sunburst framework of the ceiling. With the dayglass slowly losing its rainbow opacity, the hairpin’s ruby shone under the pink light of dusk.

Arun’s expression darkened further.

I was still frowning, breathing heavily, not understanding the significance of anything, when Keil said firmly, “Lady Alissa is in possession of royal immunity. The empire of Ansora cannot touch her.”

The air hitched in my throat, my head whipping toward him. I couldn’t have heard him right.

Yet as Keil held my stare, his hardness cracked a fraction to make way for a soft, sad smile. A plunging sensation weighed me down, my palms pressing against the cool tiles.

“What did you do?” I breathed.

But I already knew.

Because another sunset-colored evening was flaring in my memory: Valeria in my bedchamber, her fingers grazing her ruby necklace. Keil is at the palace today. He had private business with Rheya.

The next night, Keil had gifted me this hairpin, studded with the ruby he must have prized out of the necklace that had signified his immunity. I’d seen a similar empty-pronged necklace on Finbar, who’d once given his own royal immunity away.

I would not have chosen to harm her with or without it, Rheya had said to Keil when I’d woken after Banarrat.

But, despite the faith he’d claimed to have in her, he hadn’t trusted her in this. So, from the beginning, he’d given his royal immunity to me. Knowing that it, along with the Gallery protection, would grant me the same expansive immunity his father had once denied.

The kind that had made Rheya call me untouchable.

“No.” I was shaking my head, tears glassing my vision. This was everything I’d wanted to protect him against—everything I’d feared. In shielding me, Keil had stripped himself bare.

And Arun would relish his pain.

“I’m sorry,” Keil whispered, the words heavy with apology but not regret. He turned to Arun once more. “Whatever you wish to do to Lady Alissa, you will do to me instead.”

The air took on the tautness of a fiddle string one tug away from snapping.

Finally, a long breath whistled from Arun’s nose. “You have put me in a very uncomfortable situation, Your Highness.”

The hairpin glinted above me under the grip of Arun’s power, shifting in the light.

And then its sharp points plunged toward the back of my hand.

I gasped, whipping my hand aside just in time. The pin drove down so hard that it chipped the tile.

My blood spiked with horror.

“Stop!” Keil shouted at Arun, suddenly panicked. “What are you—?”

The pin whooshed up, making a great arc for my face. I scrambled back, one hand outstretched. The prongs slashed my palm, and I bit back a cry.