“So why are you crying ...” I ask. Then it hits me and my body jerks upwards. Pain ratchets all around my body, but I don’t care, the words fly out of me like rapid-fire bullets. “Our baby! Is our baby, okay? Is it, Dante? Tell me the truth.”

He puts his palms on my cheeks. “Yes, yes, the baby is fine. Calm down.”

“Promise?”

He smiles through his tears. “I promise.”

I fall back on the pillows tiredly, the last bit of my strength stripped away by that sudden burst of fear.

I take a gasping breath. “So why are you crying?”

“They are tears of happiness, bella. They are tears of happiness,” he whispers.

Strangely, I recall the look of triumph on Cassandra’s face when she tripped me. “Cassandra … she deliberately tripped me.”

“I know she did,” he growls, his eyes glowing with hate.

My brain feels foggy. I can’t think straight. “I don’t know what happened. We were getting along so well. Is it because your father gave me the key? I didn’t ask for it. What did I do wrong? She was annoyed I didn’t tell her we were in the garden, but surely that is no reason to push me down the stairs.”

“No,” he says shaking his head. “It’s nothing you did. It’s my fault.”

“Your fault?” I say, shaking my head. My thought process seems to be slow and unfocused. Like there are cobwebs in my brain making everything unclear. Must be the drugs they’ve given me. My body doesn’t take kindly to painkillers. They disorientate me and make me to behave in ways that I wouldn’t usually. Once, before I knew what effect they had on me, I almost ruined my entire career by attending a meeting with my bosses while on them.

“How is it your fault? I don’t understand.”

“By denouncing the throne, I set in motion a plot that will affect any child I have.”

“What?”

“Please, Rosa, just hear me out.”

“All right, tell me.”

“If I don’t take the throne after my father, then the rules of ascension state that the first child born of the next generation becomes the rightful heir to the throne.”

Seeing that I am about to speak, Dante holds up his hand again. “Cassandra hoped to give birth to the first child, but when I returned with you and announced that you were already pregnant, she saw her dream of giving birth to the future king, or queen of Avanti, die.”

My muddled brain struggled with that information. “Oh my God! What a fake bitch. She pretended to be my friend. All that kissing and hugging,” I shake my head, “and the whole time she was planning to kill my baby!”

“Yes.”

I frown at Dante. “Why did you bring me here knowing that neither I nor our child would be welcome?”

“Rosa, you know I never wanted to be King and I never wanted my child to have the responsibility and pressure of being the next King or Queen either. Because I always made my position clear I thought I was out of their political games and shenanigans. I brought you here for the weekend to make it clear I had found my soul mate, the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, and to tell them that I would never be coming back as King. I did not account for how power hungry they have all become. Maybe they were always that greedy. I just didn’t know it because I always did my own thing and stayed away from them.”

“Hmm … I guess your innocent weekend scared the shit out of them: the useless playboy prince who they had completely written off returns with a woman who is already pregnant with the future ruler of Avanti.”

“Yes,” Dante admits, his eyes dark and stormy. “I didn’t see it coming.”

“Oh, Dante.” I lift my hand to his face. “It was not your fault. You are not like them. There is not one bad bone in your body, so you couldn’t have known what they were capable of.”

His face hardens. “Rosa, the blood that runs in their veins runs in mine too. My happiness made me careless, and I underestimated their greed and jealousy. I won’t make that mistake again. They are no longer dealing with the playboy prince as they are all going to quickly learn. What was done can be undone!”

“What are you going to do?”

“I need your blessing for what I have to do, Rosa. Avanti might seem like a tiny insignificant country to you, but we are sitting on one of the largest deposits of money in the world! What Linnus is planning will destroy this country and I cannot allow it. It is time for me to step up and be counted.”

My heart swells with pride to see Dante grow right before my eyes from a pleasure-seeking player to a real man of strength and a purpose higher than him. Tears fill my eyes. “You don’t need my blessing to take back what is your birthright, my darling.”

“I do need your blessing, Rosa. You will be my wife. It is important that you understand what you are signing up for. Your whole life is about to change into something unrecognizable. You will have to live in Avanti. You might be able to run your own magazine, but you will most probably be too busy with charitable work to do so. Being royalty is a burden. It’s not as glamorous a role in real life as it is in movies. It’s a life with little personal freedom. Almost everything is dictated by tradition and rules and expectations, especially expectations. And your every word and action will be examined under a magnifying glass and more often than not criticized.”

“My place is next to you, wherever you are.”

“Are you sure, because I will abandon my plans in an instant if it will make you unhappy?”

I shake my head. “I’m proud of you, that you have chosen this noble path. Whatever comes our way, we will work it out together. I’m here for the long haul,” I say softly.

His shoulders sag with relief, then he straightens them. “I have to go and face the King now. Will you be okay here?”

I smile at him tenderly. “I’m in a hospital. Of course, I’ll be fine. Go do what you have to.”

He kisses me lingeringly. “Rest. I’ll be back soon. I have something important to tell you.”

I grin. “Can’t wait.”