CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Nikolai
“WALK WITH ME.” Adele gathers her crimson skirts and strides toward the gloomy entrance to the maze.
I follow as if in a trance. My head pounds, and my brain is reeling. Too many questions. Too many years living with lies and pain and never knowing who to trust. Who, if anyone has, ever loved me for me?
Maybe no one.
A feeling of utter loneliness swallows me.
Do I want to be king? It’s never been a question that I’ve consciously asked myself before. It’s as inevitable as drawing a breath. The next beat of my heart. Someday I will sit on the Stone Throne in the Reception Hall and lead my people into what I have always hoped in my deepest heart would be a prosperous and bright future.
But I don’t want to be king at this price. My birthright isn’t worth letting Adele win at her twisted game. But I don’t know the rules. I don’t know how to beat her when she holds all the cards. But the worst thing that can happen is to let her sense my uncertainty. That would be like slicing my wrists in a shark tank. Better to square my shoulders, set my jaw and figure this the fuck out. She will make a mistake. I just need to stay sharp, be ready to pounce at the first misstep.
“So quiet, no? As if the world holds its collective breath.” Adele runs her fingers over the hedgerow. “Why the long face? I’d think you would enjoy taking a stroll down memory lane.” Her voice is steeped in innuendo.
I ball my hands into tight fists. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Now, now. Coy’s not a good look on you, Nikolai,” she croons. “We might dislike each other, but do let’s be frank. I know how you ravished the lovely Kate Winter here on the ground of the maze. You feasted and rutted on her with your face like the wild beast that you are, depraved by lust. Disgusting and yet fascinating.”
I stare at her, blinking slowly.
“How do I know your...activities?” She leers. “Please. You think your father runs this place? Why do you think I encourage all of his travels for diplomacy? This is my kingdom, and I have eyes everywhere.” She enunciates each syllable of that last word. “A mouse doesn’t so much as shit in this palace without me getting an update.” She shakes her head in mock sorrow. “Now don’t get all pouty. No one likes a sore loser.” Her eyes gleam. “And you’ve lost, my sweet prince. You have lost so much that I’d be tempted to pity you if I wasn’t so absolutely delighted.”
Her laugh cuts my skin like glass shards before it morphs into a hysterical sob. “My daughter should have been queen!” she snaps. “It was her destiny to save Rosegate, not that dimwit Catriona.”
My jaw clenches. “I loved Victoria.” I choke out the bitter truth. “But she was sleeping with my traitor of a brother.”
She scoffs, sneering as she looks me up and down. “You are unfit to be king. A real man worries about affairs of the state, not of the heart. You are nothing but a weak fool. So what if Victoria didn’t love you? She would have bedded you, born you an heir. She knew her duty. And your duty was to keep her safe! There were greater plans at work.”
Every cell in my body recoils. “Wouldn’t you want more for your daughter than to serve as a broodmare to a man she didn’t love?”
“I wanted her to be queen,” she hisses. “And to...and to... It doesn’t matter! There is no more worthy goal than the pursuit of power. You took that away from her. And now I get to take your happiness from you.”
Bile rises in my throat. “She loved my brother! He took her life, Adele. And he’s been paying the price for years.” An unexpected twinge of sympathy pierces me. I loved Victoria and lost her. Damien loved her and lost everything. I will not forgive my youngest brother, but only now when I have lost Kate—when I stand to lose everything if Adele has her way—do I have the slightest idea what life might be like to be banished.
“Damien was third in line to the throne.” She speaks so forcefully spittle flies from her mouth. “You ran her off so she could be what? An insignificant nobody? Do you know who my family is, that we are a bloodline even more ancient than yours?”
I swipe my cheek, not having the slightest interest in getting into a snobby pissing match over who is the most royal. “I ran them both off after discovering them fucking like dogs in the Royal Library. And do you know what I think? I think she wanted me to catch her. I think she wanted me to free her from a future she never wanted as much as you did.”
My chest heaves. I have to squeeze my eyes shut as the memory takes hold. It’s not as if I don’t hold some of the guilt. For years I’ve wondered if it could have gone differently. If there was something I could have done that would have set in motion a different course of events that did not end with Victoria dead. But the fact remains that she loved another, that she betrayed me and was all too happy to leave once she was caught.
“She’d still be alive if it wasn’t for you.” Adele flies at me, claws outstretched, grief taking her to the point of insanity.
This is my moment.
I’ve been waiting for a misstep. If she was playing a political game, her feelings for Victoria, the grief at losing not only a daughter but also a future meal ticket, muddles her thinking. She isn’t calculating now. She is ready to tear me apart limb from limb, unleash her long-simmering resentment, the fact that she has had to kowtow to the Lorentz family to wear the crown, and now the best she will ever get is a puppet in Catriona, a weak-minded, selfish woman easily manipulated to do her bidding.
As for me, I’m ready to go to hell and bring Adele along for the ride. I am at the brink of endurance, and below me lies the bleak roiling blackness, the void that is there, always there. I’m done resisting. I’m ready to give myself over to the void.
She is right.
I’ve lost.
I’ve lost everything that matters.
The world goes crimson before a strong steady hand clamps my shoulder.
“Sire,” X says in a grave voice, pulling me back. “Come quick. There is no time.”
Kate
You will be able to hear all too clearly but see nothing. You’ll feel the touch of others all too keenly but will be paralyzed from any movement yourself. You will be alive, but to anyone without sharp medical training, you will appear dead. Heartbeat too slow to detect, breathing too shallow to recognize.
This is what X tells me before I drink. There isn’t time to ask him how he knows of such a drug or if he’s seen it work before. I have mere seconds to decide that I trust him before everything goes black and I lose myself completely.
I feel the cold stone beneath my cheek but see nothing at all. I hear the frantic scuffle of shoes in the distance. The sound grows louder, and then there is nothing but silence for several long moments before the unmistakable click-clack of high heels approach.
“She was delirious. Screaming nonsense about how the queen threatened her livelihood if she did not get you down the aisle. Of course it was all rubbish,” X says. “After her tirade she complained of shortness of breath. I knew she was just looking for a way out, so I ignored her pleas. And then she just—collapsed.”
Metal clangs, and I swear the ground beneath me shakes.
“You ignored her?” His voice is hoarse, frantic, and I can feel his pain. It is as tangible as the stone against my cheek.
Nikolai! I want to cry out his name, but I’m stuck in this blackness, forced to do nothing but listen and to trust that I will be out of here soon.
“You bastard!” he growls, his voice wild. “I will kill you, X. I will fucking kill you!”
Laughter trills through Nikolai’s madness. The queen. They are all here, staring at my prone body. And Nikolai thinks—Oh God. X. What have we done to him?
“Oh, this is too good,” Adele says. “Not even in the plan, but it certainly makes things much easier for me. Tell me, X. Is she dead?”
“Unlock the fucking cell!” Nikolai bellows, interrupting her question.
“Oh, very well,” the queen concedes. “Have your last look if you must.”
Metal grates over stone, and I feel the faint warmth of skin against my own.
“There is no pulse,” X says gravely. “Sire, my deepest condolences.”
I hear a sickening crack and then Nikolai’s broken voice. “I will kill you for this,” he says again, and I’m not sure if he’s speaking to the queen, or X, or both.
The scraping of heels comes nearer, and icy fingers touch my neck. If I wasn’t already paralyzed, the queen’s cold touch would do it.
“You didn’t actually think I’d trust your word, X. Did you? But it looks as if you’re being truthful. The girl is dead.”
Her skin leaves mine, and I fight to claw my way out of my body, out of this cell and away from her even though I know there’s nothing more she can do to me—so long as she thinks I’m gone.
Seconds later I am weightless. No, I’m in someone’s arms. I feel warm liquid splash on my cheek and know that it is my prince who cradles me.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers, and I feel his trembling lips press against my forehead. “I believe you,” he whispers. “I trusted you, and I know in my gut it was the right thing to do, but I let the goddamn past get the better of me. I will never forgive myself for doubting you. I don’t deserve your love, but I know you gave it to me today. I let my fear blind me to the truth, but know this, Kate. I love you. And I promise you this—I will not love another.” And then in a voice so soft I almost miss it, I hear, “I win our wager,” he says, his whisper cracking on that last word. “I will not marry—not if it means the woman beside me is not you. You owe me a favor, Kate. Those were our terms.” I hear him take a shuddering breath. “Please. Come back.”
My body rocks in his arms. Again and again warm drops of liquid splatter my cheek, and my heart cracks wide-open for the broken man who holds me. “Come back, Kate,” he pleads, louder this time, and then his lips are on mine.
I taste the salt of his tears, and if I wasn’t sure that I was, in fact, paralyzed, I would swear that my eyes leaked tears of their own. Kiss after soft kiss, he doesn’t let go of me, not even when the queen groans.
“Enough already,” she hisses. “You’ll never know loss like I do, Nikolai. But now you will live with yours for a lifetime. Now, X. Wipe the blood from your lip and do something with Miss Winter’s body. I’m sure you can conjure a reasonable explanation for the Royal Guard, and I trust it will be kept from the papers.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” I hear X say.
I feel Nikolai lift my palm to his cheek, and my fingers twitch against his tear-soaked skin.
A throat clears. “Your Highness,” X says, “is the king not arriving back at the palace shortly? Surely you want to be the first to break the news about the prince and Catriona. I will—take care of things here.”
“Yes. Fine,” she says. “Nikolai, clean yourself up and join us in the grand dining hall for dinner. You can announce your impending nuptials yourself.”
Nikolai says nothing, only holds my palm flat against his cheek as I listen to the piercing blows of her heels against the stone until the sound grows farther and farther away. Finally, I hear the far-off clank of the heavy cellar door closing.
Nikolai lets go of my hand, but it doesn’t fall. My fingers twitch against his skin again, and I hear a sharp intake of breath.
“X?” He draws out his servant’s name.
“Really, Sire,” X says, the slightest admonishment in his voice, “I thought you had more faith in me than that.”
My eyes flutter open, and Nikolai’s head is turned toward the man who hopefully saved us both. I gasp as my sluggish lungs gulp at the air while my heartbeat feels like it’s increasing at an exponential rate.
Both of their heads snap toward mine. X stares at me with a satisfied grin on his face despite a split lower lip. It’s the first genuine smile I’ve seen from him, and I can’t help but feel the slightest bit victorious. I vowed to make the man smile, and I did, even if I had to nearly die to do it.
Nikolai still holds me, his eyes wide and red rimmed.
I regain movement in my other arm and cradle his face in my palms.
“I love you, Nikolai,” I say, my thumb swiping at a remaining tear on his cheek. “The money was never—”
But his lips are on mine before I get a chance to explain, and that’s when I realize that I don’t have to. He trusts that my love is real, and it is. God, it is. He pulls me closer, deepening the kiss as my lips part for him. My limbs are still weak, but he holds me so tight I know I won’t fall.
“Sire,” X interrupts. “We don’t have much time. The drug was supposed to last longer. Perhaps I measured incorrectly in my haste. We must get Miss Kate to the hospital.”
Nikolai pulls away. “But I thought—” he stammers. “I thought she was okay,” he says to X and then turns back to me. “You cannot leave me again,” he says.
I shake my head. “This is all X’s doing,” I say. “I trust I will be okay soon. But my sister. My grandmother.” A tear escapes. “I need to get to them.”
In the distance the cellar door grinds open again.
“I will explain everything in the car, Sire,” X says, an edge in his voice I do not like. “But we are out of time!”
“I can’t walk,” I whisper, fear lacing my words. If Adele was happy to find me dead, what will she do if she finds me still alive?
Nikolai stands with me still in his arms, and I wrap mine tight around his neck.
“We cannot exit the cell without being seen,” he says.
X raises a brow. “Of course we can, Your Highness. Just not through the door.”