A Clash of Three Courts (An Heir Comes to Rise, #4)

by C.C. Peñaranda

“I want…” Her breathing was labored, fighting head against heart. “Say it.” “You.”

“This dress looked beautiful on you,” he said in a deep, gravelly tone. Her sharp breath was swallowed by the tear of fabric when Nik effortlessly helped her out from the front instead. “Remind me I owe you a new one.”

Don’t ask questions—they arouse suspicion. Make statements as if you hold the answers already.”

Yet she couldn’t get that symbol out of her mind. The side-facing stag emblem carved into a brass pin. Lennox was from Fenstead.

“To understand. Because as your friends…we can’t sit by and watch you make the mistake of a lifetime. And for your kind, that is a long, torturous existence.”

“A mate is a match of the power we have within. It’s not always felt in the heart.”

“I’ve often wondered if we’re all born cursed to desire what doesn’t come so easily. To long for what is always just out of reach.”

“You will make a gracious queen, Tauria Stagknight. One who will reclaim and restore what was taken.”

“You have never been my ward. Or my subject. Or my princess. You are my equal, Tauria. In every way, you shine brighter than the moon I’ve watched change in the sky since you left, knowing it was the one thing we could look upon all the same. Is that pitiful of me?”

I want you to know that I would go to war for you. Because you are Fenstead, but you are also High Farrow. And no matter what you choose, I am yours. Even if you cannot be mine.”