Inside the royal carriage, Drake sat across from me in complete silence for the entire ride back to the palace, ever since I told him about the journey I was about to take.
Unlike Dylan or Jasper, he didn't try to stop me.
Partly because he knew it was useless. And partly because… he lacked the power to.
After everything that happened, Drake must have realized the one truth he couldn't outrun. That even if he had brute strength, he couldn't protect me from the game of power, from the kind of war fought not with blades but with cunning and control.
The dark circles under his eyes betrayed the weight of that realization.
He kept opening his mouth as if to say something, only to clamp it shut again, staring down at his hands resting restlessly on his lap. He'd been doing that since we boarded the carriage. I waited patiently, but in the end, I had to speak first.
"Are your wounds healing properly?"
