I lean my head against the wall. I should have known she’d attack me right away with tough questions, especially after last night, but I’m still not prepared.

“I guess… I guess I just never thought about the fact that I might be giving up the chance to experience love. Not in those terms, at least.” My free hand falls to the plush carpet, my fingers brushing against the thick silk strands. “I knew there was a risk I’d end up miserable and lonely. That we’d end up hating each other and choosing to spend the rest of our lives as far away from each other as possible. I knew I’d be giving up my freedom, and possibly my happiness, and whatever dreams I might have had before. But love? I guess I never really thought about it. Not my own love, anyway.”

“Not your own love?”

“You know,” I say with a wave of my hand. “You were there. Andrew was miserably in love with Victoria. He was ready to give up the throne for her. There was even a night he went up on the palace roof and… Well, you don’t need to hear all that.”

“You don’t mean…” Her voice trails off as thunder rumbles overhead. The light fixture above us trembles and rattles. “He was thinking about jumping?”

“He denies it, of course. But Sophia saw him. And she wouldn’t make up something like that.” And I wouldn’t put it past Andrew. He completely lost his head over Victoria. “I know my brother. He’d lay down his own life for Montovia. The fact that he was willing to risk everything for Victoria… That means something. And Victoria… I got to know her during those few weeks. She’s a good woman—and she’s good for my brother. If he’d had to marry you to settle our countries’ disputes…I guarantee you, no one would have been happy. A lot of good people would have suffered. And I couldn’t let that happen. I saw an opportunity to make things right, and I took it.”

Thunder rumbles again, and the wind howls—even far from any windows, the sound is unsettling.

Finally, Justine speaks. “So you did all of this for your brother?”

I laugh, trying to lighten the mood. “I wish I could claim to be that selfless. The truth is that I saw the chance to be a hero, to do something useful with my life. Andrew’s the heir and Leo’s the spare, which means I, as the third son, didn’t really have much to do except to show up to formal events and smile in family portraits. This was my chance to do something bigger. And if I helped my brother and Victoria along the way, even better.”

She’s silent for a long time—so long I start to worry.

“What about you?” I say. “You agreed to this, too, after you got over the initial shock. You must have seen the value in what we’re doing—we saved our countries from certain war. That’s a very noble choice.”

“Is that your question?” she says.

“Yes.”

Somewhere in the distance, I hear glass break again. Justine flinches, then speaks.

“I never wanted to be a hero. Honestly, I don’t see the appeal. And if you do something just to be a hero, then the action is kind of empty, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think so. Why you do something doesn’t matter if the effects are still the same.”

“But that’s just it—the why is everything. And say what you will, I don’t think wanting to be a hero is reason enough to sacrifice your happiness. It may be a part of it, certainly, but the sort of conviction it takes to marry a stranger…that requires something much more personal.”

“Are you calling me a liar, Princess? Or are you just avoiding answering my question?”

“Neither. I’m just thinking out loud.” I can feel her eyes on me in the darkness, even though I know she can’t really see me. “When you spoke of your brother and Victoria, there was something in your voice…something that made me understand, for the first time, why you’d do something like this. I knew you were close to your siblings, but I never imagined you’d give up so much for them.”

“Give up my own love, you mean?”

“Among other things.”

“It’s not that difficult to give up something I never had in the first place.”

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those men who doesn’t believe in love.”

“I’m not. But that doesn’t change the fact that I had nothing to lose in that area.” My fingers thread themselves in the carpet again. “I’ve always thought of love, like happiness, as a choice.”

“That’s depressing.”

“Is it, though? I don’t think so. You can choose to go through life looking ways to be happy and open your heart, and eventually you’ll find them, no matter what your external circumstances. Or you can choose to go through life looking for reasons to be unhappy and closed off, and you’ll find those instead. No matter what life throws our way, we have a choice—to look for the good or look for the bad. So many people think of happiness and love as things that happen to us, instead of the other way around. I choose to look for happiness, no matter where I end up.”

“And yet you’ve never chosen to fall in love.”

I let her words sit with me for a moment before answering. “I guess I just assumed I’d know when it was time to make that choice.”

Suddenly, abruptly, she pulls away from me. In the darkness, I hear her climb to her feet.

“I should probably go check on some things,” she says.

I stand up beside her. “But the storm is still right overhead.”

“There’s a lot to do.”

I feel movement near me—she’s trying to walk past me—but I reach out, fumbling for her in the dark. My hand catches her arm, and I pull her toward me, right against my body.

“You have a choice, too, Princess,” I murmur.

Her hands are braced against my chest. “I didn’t have a choice when I married you.”

“But you did—you could have arranged something else with your father. Or run away to America. Or joined a convent. But you chose this. The question is, what will you choose now? To look for ways to be miserable? Or to look for happiness?”

She’s frozen in my arms, and I take full advantage, dropping my head and kissing her.

Every time our mouths meet, I seem to lose all sense of control. This time is no different. As my lips join with hers, need throbs through my body, charging through me in an unstoppable current. Her mouth opens beneath mine, and I hear myself growl somewhere in the back of my throat. My arms tighten around her, holding her firmly against my body.

With a sudden jerk, she pulls away from me. I try to grab her again, but before I can, she stomps her foot down on top of mine, just like she did the night she found out about our engagement.

I yowl and jump back as pain shoots up my leg.

“Love isn’t a choice,” she says, and there’s fire in her voice. “If you’d ever actually experienced it, Your Highness, you’d know that.”

“Everything is a choice, Princess,” I say through my pain. “And I’ve made mine. The question is, have you made yours?”

Her response is an exasperated noise. I feel a slight breeze as she sweeps by me, but when I reach after her, my hand meets empty air.

“I have work to do,” she calls back to me. “Stay there.”

Like hell I will.

I start to limp after her, but she’s moving too fast to allow me to catch up to her, at least while my foot is throbbing with pain.

She’s scared, I tell myself. That man from her past broke her heart—it’s no wonder she’s afraid to trust another man again. Especially one who arranged to marry her without consulting her.

I really bungled that, didn’t I?

By the time I reach the end of the corridor, I can’t even hear her footsteps any longer. Rain pounds against the roof somewhere high overhead, and the wind sounds like an injured animal as it howls through the palace’s many towers.

There’s a window along this hallway, and fortunately, it doesn’t appear to have broken. I limp over to it and look outside.

This side of the palace is mostly protected from the wind and the rain, but the damage outside is still startling. The sky is dark enough to be mistaken for night, and several of the clouds overhead have a disturbing orange-red tone to their undersides. The gardens below are a mess—plants have been flattened against the grass, bits of debris from the city litter the grounds, and both of the decorative ponds I can see from here have already overflowed. As I stand here, the heavy rain begins to shift. At first I don’t even notice the small plinks against the window—they’re easily ignored among the general roar of the storm—but after a few minutes, they get louder. And bigger.

Hail.

It bounces against the window and against the eaves just above. Some of the pieces are too tiny to see, but others are the size of my thumbnail—and then others fall, as big across as coins.

Something flickers at the corner of my eye, catching my attention—orange, dancing light. I turn my head, and my stomach seizes.

Fire.

One of the palace’s outbuildings, just barely visible from my vantage point, has caught fire. It may have been hit by lightning, but in these circumstances, it just as easily could have been caused by an overturned candle or some electrical malfunction. Hopefully the rain will put it out quickly.

As I watch, though, the doors to the building burst open, and a man stumbles out, a couple of horses at his heels.

Fuck—it’s the stables.

The man has a couple of cats in one arm, and though I can see him shout something—to whom, I don’t know—his words are lost beneath the storm. He raises his free arm above his head, trying to protect himself from the hail. The horses startle—one of them rears the moment a piece of hail hits its flank, and the other lunges out of the way, galloping across the grounds. The man takes a handful of running steps after it, then turns back to the stable and appears to shout again.

A second man stumbles out of the building with more horses. Men and animals both are panicking, trapped between the fire and the elements. Horses scream and run in every direction, running loose about the gardens. I grew up with horses—in that terrified state, they’re dangerous to both themselves and to anyone they might encounter. If the fire or the storm don’t get them, they may very well fall and break their own legs.

The second man turns and runs back into the stable.

There must still be animals—or people—inside. And despite the pouring rain and hail, the fire still rages. Billowing black smoke rises from the building, joining the dark clouds overhead.

And I can’t just stand here any longer.

I run down the corridor. I still don’t know my way around the palace very well, but I manage to find a door that leads outside.

The wind smacks me in the face the moment I open the door. Pellets of hail rain down on me, but I lift my jacket up over my head and run out into the gardens. I’ll probably have some bruises later, but I’m not about to stand by and watch these men and animals suffer without help.

Justine will be pissed when she finds out you didn’t stay where she left you, I think wryly. But I’ll worry about my wife’s reaction later. Right now, I just hope she’s somewhere safe.

Horses are everywhere when I reach the stable, and I spot a cat and several kittens huddling in fear under a bush nearby, but neither of the men I saw before is anywhere to be found. Then I hear a shout from inside the stable—at least one of them is still inside. The smoke is thick in the air, and this close, the rain does little to help. Pulling the collar of my soaked shirt up over my mouth, I offer a silent prayer up to whatever God is watching over me, and run inside.