Aetherion's eyes opened wide, his body keeling over. He could almost feel the sword slipping into the slightest of angled cracks between his lungs and heart.
The realization chilled him to his very core, his head slowly turning to face the side profile of Theron's face… and yet, the young man wasn't even looking at him. He was already scanning the rest of the battlefield as though the life and death of Aetherion didn't matter in the slightest.
The Crown Prince who had once stood on a building, lofty and powerful from above, looking down as though the world and Theron himself owed him something, was being treated as though he was little more than air.
And the worst part was that Aetherion knew Theron wasn't sparing him out of fear, he wasn't sparing him because of Sadie—despite how much his little sister griped about this very same young man—he wasn't even sparing him because he was tired…
