I mean, it was sort of true, but the brevity of the human lifespan didn’t make them any less valuable. Perhaps I would have been under that impression if not for Blaise, but I didn’t think so.

No, I’d been around a long time before Blaise’s grandparents even met. And I’d never been convinced that humans’ short lifespans made them any less valuable than the fae.

If I was going to sit here and fantasize about Ellie’s lips turning blue and her last breath stealing away from her mouth and her eyes rolling back in her head, I couldn’t very well use the classic, “Well, she’s a human” excuse to make myself feel better, now could I?

So I guessed that meant no daydreaming about my betrothed’s untimely demise.

I was halfway to the seedy pub before I realized where my feet were taking me. Before I remembered Blaise had forbidden me from taking another sip of alcohol.

It wasn’t exactly her decision, but Blaise was one of the few people in Alondria who genuinely liked me. Her demands carried a bit more weight than most people’s.

So instead of getting day drunk like a proper fellow, I wandered my way around the city, eventually finding myself in the art district. Now that I was here, I wondered why I didn’t visit this part of the city more often. Even if the shops hadn’t been decorated with colorful murals of dragons and sea monsters, the scent of lavender candles burning in the air, it would have been worth a visit just for the music.

This morning, a man had already set up a fiddle on a street corner and was strumming away at a lively tune. I stayed for a while, pretending to be interested in a local vendor’s ceramics, just so I’d have an excuse to listen to him finish a song Jerad and I use to belt the lyrics to when one of us was trying to resolve a fight with the other.

When the man plucked the bridge, the tune pricked my heart. I listened anyway.

If I closed my eyes, I could swear I felt his presence standing next to me.

Towering over me. Outshining me, as always.

But at least he was here.

But the melody couldn’t stretch on forever, and soon the fiddler took a break, eagerly captivating a passerby in a story about the time he played with “The Red,” a red-headed flautist rumored to enchant entire towns with her songs, only to steal away their children in the middle of the night.

Musicians and their affinity for legends.

I found myself wandering away from the arts district and toward the main thoroughfare. My stomach was practically roaring. Even from several blocks away, I could scent freshly baked scones being pulled from the oven at Forcier’s Sweets and Treats. As I walked the streets and the voice of the fiddler dulled, my mind wandered back to Ellie.

I shouldn’t have saved her this morning. Then there would be nothing to daydream about. Her death would be a memory, not a sick fantasy, and I’d be free of this mess.

A mess you got yourself into, my brother’s ever-present voice reminded me.

Well, yes, I suppose it would be unfair if Ellie had to die for my mistakes.

Still.

She certainly made it easier to fantasize about skipping away from her twitching body with a renewed spring in my step when she made comments about my sex life in front of my mother.

Fates, what had she been thinking?

I’d thought I’d gotten over that, but my entire body still cringed when I recalled what had probably been the most embarrassing moment of my two-hundred-year existence.

Still, I couldn’t very well let her die, could I? It wasn’t as if I’d exactly stolen the hearts of the Dwellen people since being shoved into the too-large shoes of the heir. I couldn’t imagine it would soften public opinion if my betrothed died a mysterious death only a day after solidifying our engagement.

Though, I supposed we could have told the truth, that Ellie Payne had refused to marry me. That she was an insolent, self-righteous plague on my conscience who honestly probably deserved better than I could ever give her. Which made her extra hateable (because let’s be honest, perfectish people are unbearable). And that she’d choked herself to death by disobeying the fae bargain.

That was certainly one option.

But knowing the people and their insistence on believing the worst about me, I was fairly certain they’d find a way to make Ellie a martyr and me her executioner.

Why was I talking myself through this like Ellie was dead and I had a decision to make, anyway?

Ellie was very much not dead. She was very much my betrothed, and she would stay that way until Blaise and I figured out a way to undo the bargain.

Or until Ellie died, possibly in the tournament.

I could let it happen, of course.

I could let her die.

In front of a crowd wasn’t ideal, though it would be nice to have an audience to witness me wipe that smug look off her face.

Okay, even thinking like this was starting to make me cringe at myself.

I’d had no evidence that my father was the murdery type—I mean, obviously he was the king; he had a tendency to execute people without having to blink twice—but that was the kind of murder that most considered aboveboard.

I meant that I’d never known him to murder, murder. Behind closed doors. Dead bodies of his enemies popping up miles down the river, washed up on shore. That sort of thing.

Well, there was that female who laughed at my mother’s new gown that one time.

They’d found her severed finger (they knew it was hers because of the gaudy sapphire ring) a few days later. A village boy had claimed it had fallen from the sky, dropped from the beak of a circling vulture overhead.

Well, there wasn’t much finger pointing one could do when there wasn’t actually a body…

Still, I was sure he had it in him—a good, vicious murder when the situation warranted one.

Now that I thought about it, my father, in a rare display of his magic, had unleashed an array of deadly vines upon the sister of the Queen of Naenden during the most recent Council meeting.

My father had refused to allow me to attend. Not that I’d wanted to, though apparently I missed quite the spectacle.

Luckily for Dwellen’s relationship with the kingdom of Naenden, his attempt on the young girl’s life had been thwarted by Queen Abra of Mystral. That, I wished I’d been there to see.

Perhaps my father was capable of true murder after all.

He hadn’t passed that trait onto me.

I’d gotten his nose, and that was about it.

He would have said he hadn’t passed along his intelligence or dignity to me either, that Jerad must have hoarded it all for himself.

Neither did he gift me his propensity for scheming.

Not that I didn’t think about things before they happened. It wasn’t as if I went into situations without knowing exactly what I planned to do.

It was just that rarely did I ever find a situation that turned out just as I had imagined it. There was always some unforeseeable variable (my father would have claimed there was no such thing), like Ellie Payne actually being an annoyingly admirable person, that required a change in the plan at the last minute.

So, yes. I had considered what I would do if Ellie refused to marry me. If she refused to take part in the Trials, and thus suffocated herself to death.