3 Chapter 3

3

When Amery broke the news to Tovin, his friend shocked him by laughing.

“What the hell can you possibly find so damn funny about this?” the prince demanded. They lay together on the divan in his quarters, Tovin stretched out beneath him, both anxiously glancing at the chamber door in case a servant appeared unannounced. “My life is over. If I can’t have you—”

But Tovin had tousled Amery’s hair, ruffling the normally smooth surface of that auburn curtain. Though Amery shooed him away, he couldn’t help but grin at the touch. “So we’ll simply no longer be friends,” Tovin explained.

Amery didn’t understand why the knight’s voice sounded so…so happyat the thought. A world without Tovin seemed bleak and lifeless. How would he get through the day? “I shall plunge a dagger into my heart,” he announced with all the seriousness of a teenager in love. “I shall pluck out my eyes, and cut off my hands, and—”