“Neita.” Ruben’s sister dragged out the name, her accent softening the t. Cherry smiled politely and sliced her sautéed chicken breast into tiny fucking pieces, waiting for the punchline.

Beside her, she felt Ruben stiffen. He heard that predatory quality in his sister’s voice, a shark sniffing out blood.

“What an interesting name,” Sophronia continued, her voice dripping with mockery. She was one to fucking talk. “Where does it come from?”

“Sophy,” Ruben said, his tone warning.

“Calm yourself, little brother. I am speaking with my future sister-in-law.”

Sophronia’s real sister-in-law, the pale and birdlike Lydia, had spent the first half of this strained dinner doing everything she could to avoid Sophronia’s attention. And her husband’s. Cherry rather thought that said it all.

Still, she forced herself to smile at Ruben’s painfully beautiful sister. She faced off the porcelain skin, the ice-blue eyes and the golden hair, so unassuming on Lydia and so very devastating on Sophronia. “The Caribbean,” she said.

“Ah! You’re from the West Indies.”

Cherry’s jaw set. How strange; the colonial name sounded fine coming from the lips of her migrant grandparents, but corrosive from Sophronia.

“I am a British Jamaican,” she said slowly. “Third generation.”

“Is that what they call it? Fascinating.”

“Sophronia,” Ruben said calmly. “Shut your fucking mouth.”

At the head of the table—which put him a good two metres away from Cherry—the king slammed a hand against the smooth, dark wood.

Silence fell. Sophronia rolled her eyes. Lydia gazed firmly down at her plate, looking even paler than usual.

“I will not have cursing at my table,” Harald said.

Ruben sighed, leaning back in his seat. He laced his hands behind his head as if he were lying around in the sun rather than dining with a king. He looked at his brother and said, “Fuck. You.”

Cherry tried very hard not to smile.

But then Harald leant forward with a look on his face that erased all humour. His pale eyes shone with manic fury for a second—just a second—before the disturbing flash of anger was hidden behind a benevolent smile. A smile that looked more like a mask. The monster beneath flickered in and out of view, a twisted merging of the real and the false that sent shivers down her spine.

Harald stared at Ruben for one, long moment. But then his gaze slid to Lydia.

“Get up,” he said.

Lydia stood.

So did Ruben. “Harald. What are you doing?”

Sophronia sat back in her chair, surveying the scene with obvious satisfaction. She really was beautiful. Cherry wouldn’t mind if she died.

Harald smiled blandly at Ruben, as if they were discussing the weather. “You appear to have forgotten how things work here, little brother. Allow me to remind you. Lydia, come here.”

The pale woman kept her gaze to the floor as she walked around the table towards her husband. Ruben looked like he was going to be sick. Cherry’s heart settled in her throat, threatening to choke her.

Harald stood up and took his wife’s hand, but his gaze stayed pinned to Ruben. “You remember the fun we used to have, little brother. You’re too big for those games now, but Lydia isn’t. I think we’ll retire early this evening.”

“What the fuck? Harald, no.” Ruben shoved back his chair. “Stop it.”

“Or what?” The king smiled. “Tell me, little brother. What will happen if I don’t? What will you do?”

A muscle leapt in Ruben’s jaw as he clenched his fists, his body coiled tight as a spring. “Don’t think I’ll allow this. I will tear your head from your fucking body before I let you leave this room with her.”

Harald shrugged. “I know how your baser instincts rule you. Always so violent. Enough of my guard are stationed around this room to guarantee my safety. Your threats don’t bother me.”

Ruben closed his eyes, pain written all over his face. Cherry felt the echoes of his panic, his fury, his helplessness, as if their feelings were connected.

She stood and joined him, her hand coming to rest on his shoulder. And he looked at her, first with shock, then with awe, as if she’d performed a miracle.

But Cherry couldn’t focus on that. She turned her gaze to the trembling woman on Harald’s arm and said, her voice gentle, “Come with us, Lydia. Come with us now, and we’ll leave.”

Lydia shook her head. “The girls—“

“We’ll fetch them,” Ruben said. “I’ll get them myself. We’ll all go now.”

Before she could reply, peals of tinkling laughter rent the air. Sophronia watched them all with obvious delight, swirling her wine glass in hand. “Take the king’s heirs?” She said. “Ruben, darling. Do be sensible. It pays to know when you’re beaten.”

At those words, Lydia’s face crumpled in on itself. She shook her head. “Your sister is right, Ruben. It’s not a good idea.”

“I don’t give a fuck. Say the word, Lydia.”

She shook her head. “It’s not so bad. I’m being dramatic. If you’d just…” She smiled, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “If you’d just stop provoking him… If we can all be civil, everything will be fine.”

Ruben swallowed, hard. “Lydia—“

“Please,” she whispered, the word echoing around the grand room.

“Alright,” Ruben said, his voice a ghost. “I’m sorry.” Then he turned to face his brother and said it again. “I’m sorry.”

Harald cocked his head. “I beg your pardon?”

Through gritted teeth, he repeated himself. “I apologise for my behaviour, Your Majesty.”

Harald nodded graciously. “I see. I accept your apology.” He returned to the table and sat down with easy grace. Across the table, Sophronia sipped at her wine. Lydia sank miserably into her seat and picked up her knife and fork, her hands shaking.

Bile rose in Cherry’s throat, but she kept her face carefully blank. “Excuse me,” she murmured. “I’m not feeling well.”

She turned and headed for the door, not bothering to wait for Harald’s permission. If he spoke to her right now, she might lose her mind and stab him with a butter knife. And she was still a British citizen. It would probably cause a political incident.

As she reached the door, she realised that Ruben wasn’t following her. She turned back to find him standing there, staring after her with something hopeless in his eyes.

Clearing her throat, Cherry called, “Ruben, I need you to come with me. I don’t know how to get back.”

He nodded stiffly. Came to join her.

They left together.

* * *

They strode through the halls in silence, and every footstep reverberated through Ruben’s mind like the sound of a door slamming shut.

When they were safely in their own quarters, he held his breath, waiting for the blow. For the words, or the complete lack of words, that would tell him it really was over. That she couldn’t even look at him, never mind care for him, because what kind of man found himself in this position?

She turned to face him, her skin leached of its usual glow. And she said, “Explain.”

Where to fucking start?

“I don’t know what just happened,” he admitted, his voice shaking. “Harald never—he’s never—“

“That’s not a common occurrence, then?”

He looked up sharply. “No. I never thought… I thought he loved her. A twisted sort of love, the only kind he’s capable of, but—I thought I was the only one he’d…”

Cherry caught his hands in hers. She pulled them, big and rough and clearly fucking useless as they were, to her lips. Kissed his knuckles. “He hurt you. When you were a child.”

It felt like freedom to say, “Yes.”

“Men like that are never satisfied,” she whispered. “They’re empty, and the pain of the vulnerable is all that sustains them. We need to do something.”

Ruben shoved down the panic that clouded his mind, the memories that suffocated him, and focused on her words. “You’re right. God, who knows how fucking long he’s been doing this. I should never have left. What was I thinking?”

“You were thinking that this place is hell, and you needed to escape,” Cherry said. “That’s called survival. Never regret it.” She stepped closer to him, her hands cradling his face. In the midst of his horror and confusion and guilt he wished, just for a second, that she was touching him the way she used to. Not out of pity or obligation, but because she cared for him.

He’d ruined that. Add it to the fucking list.

“Listen to me,” she said softly. “We’re here for a week. You know Lydia well?”

He nodded shakily. “They married when I was a child. She was always nice to me.”

“Good. You spend this week convincing her. Reassure her that we can protect her, whatever it takes.”

Ruben nodded, her meaning dawning on him slowly but surely. “And if she agrees, we’ll take them all. Out of the country. To England, even.”

“Exactly.”

The tightness in his chest eased slightly. He didn’t stop to think about the fact that this plan would cause the collapse of everything he’d ever clung to. He had no doubt Harald would do his utmost to twist this situation, to paint it as some kind of criminal act—kidnapping, probably. Ruben’s place in the royal family would disappear, and he’d officially become the shame he’d always been treated as.

But that didn’t matter anymore. All of a sudden, he was struggling to understand how it had ever mattered at all.

A thought gripped him. “What if she doesn’t agree? What if she doesn’t want to risk it?”

Cherry sucked in a breath. “Then we’ll stay. We’ll make some kind of excuse and stay for as long as it takes.”

Ruben looked down at her face, the steely conviction in her eyes. This would work. This would work, because she would make it so, through sheer force of will, through the power that hummed through her like a heartbeat. He wanted to fall at her feet. He wanted to tell her exactly how he felt about her, but he wasn’t foolish enough to think that she’d listen.

This didn’t change a thing between them. She was just the sort of woman to do what was right, regardless of the circumstances.

So he nodded, and squeezed her hands, and then he let her go. “We should get some sleep,” he said softly.

“Yes,” she agreed. “We should.” She turned away from him without hesitation. It hurt more than ever.

* * *

Cherry slid further under the covers of her huge bed, staring into the darkness. She tried her best not to imagine a five-year-old Ruben, orphaned and alone, left in the care of those vipers, but it was hard. Almost impossible.

She hoped more than anything in the world that they’d leave here at the end of the week with Lydia and her children in tow. But she’d seen enough abusive relationships to know that things might not go to plan.

Fuck.

Ruben had gotten ready for bed and laid down on the stiff-looking sofa in the parlour without prompting. Not a single complaint had passed his lips since the horrors that had taken place at dinner.

She didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all.

She didn’t want him silent and accepting. She wanted him angry, protesting, pushing his fucking luck.

And of course, at that moment, when she was feeling weak, a memory floated to the surface of her mind. Ruben, explaining why he lived in normal house on the grounds of his huge bloody mansion.

I don’t like big houses. Feels like a palace.

Well, now they were in a palace. And she knew he was suffocating.

With a sigh, Cherry pushed the covers aside and got up. She stumbled through the dark, fumbling for the ornate, crystal handle that marked the room’s heavy door. Then, once she found it, she pulled it open and whispered into through the gap, “Ruben.”

For a moment, the silence was as heavy as the darkness. But then she heard a slight creak as the delicate sofa strained under his shifting weight. “Cherry?”

“Come here,” she said softly.

He moved faster than was reasonable in the dark, in the middle of the night, when he should have been on the edge of sleep. But she’d known he wouldn’t sleep. He probably couldn’t.

He banged into something, cursed, and she bit back a smile. She couldn’t fall into the trap of laughing with him in the dark, as if they were something other than… associates. Associates who had to maintain a certain level of intimacy, but not an excessive level.

When his hands settled on her shoulders, Cherry almost leapt out of her skin.

“Are you okay?” He asked softly. “Do you need me?”

She snorted. “I’ve never needed anyone, and I don’t intend to start now.”

“Cherry,” he murmured, and his hands slid down her arms, tracing white-hot fire against her skin. “Oh, Cherry. You’re perfect.”

She jerked back, away from his touch. “Stop that. I thought we could share the bed, since it’s so huge, but if you can’t keep your hands to yourself—“

“I can,” he said immediately. “I can. Whatever you want.”

“Hmph.” She turned and fumbled her way back towards the bed. “We’ll see.”

He did keep his hands to himself, in the end. But that didn’t stop their bodies from sliding together as they both settled into the mattress. It didn’t stop the ghost of his warmth from enveloping her, or the scent of his skin. And it didn’t stop memories from drowning her, teasing out her reluctant arousal, even as she gritted her teeth and lay stiffly on her back with her hands by her sides.

This was a bad idea. Terrible. There was no way she could—

He was asleep.

Cherry stayed still and silent for another moment, listening closely to the slow, even cadence of his breathing. He was definitely asleep. Just like that. Jesus Christ, he was irritating.

But still, she found herself reaching for him in the dark, tracing the sweeping contours of his face with gentle fingers. She would happily set this fucking palace alight, with both of his siblings trapped inside. That probably said something about her morals, and definitely said something about her attachment to him.

She couldn’t worry about it, though, with him beside her. Bit by bit, Cherry felt herself relax, felt her mind and her body grow heavy, felt her eyes slide shut.

And somehow, she slept too. Who’d have thought?