A Familiar Threat

VANCE’S POV

I sit in the quiet for a long time after that, turning Agnes’s words over in my head.

She has run this house since before I was King. She keeps the staff in line, serves as a maternal figure to half the people under this roof, and she does not panic over shadows. If she says something is wrong, it is.

And then there is my cousin, Vane.

I wish I could say there was a time when she wasn’