Unfaded Glory

by Sara Arden

  She bit her lip.

  Yes, she loved Byron Hawkins.

  It was true—it was the first time she’d ever felt this for anyone. She knew love and lust could be easily confused, but when she imagined her future, he was there. Not just as some soldier on a mission, but as a true husband. A partner. A lover. Her best friend.

  He’d quickly become all of those things. She could tell him anything. Anything but this because she knew he didn’t want it.

  She’d always thought that love was something that should be shared, given freely with no expectation of anything in return. She’d thought it was stupid to keep those feelings to yourself because, after all, what could be bad about love?

  But she saw now that it was a burden to know that someone loved you if you didn’t reciprocate the feeling. It was awkward and uncomfortable for both people. Just like that soda she’d used as a comparison: If no one was going to drink it, why bother to open it? All of that wonderful, fizzy, bubbly carbonation just disappeared into nothing.

  Wasted.

  So she’d hold it inside, keep it tightly sealed in its bottle and it could fizz happily but quietly.

  Maybe she wasn’t a silly little girl, after all. She was strong enough to love him, to be in love with him, and not punish him for not feeling the same thing in return. He had enough to bear on his shoulders, and she knew that he cared for her in his own way.

  He’d said he’d kill for her and he’d die for her. There was devotion there. So what if it wasn’t love? She’d planned on living without it, so nothing had to change. She’d just enjoy these feelings for what they were, an experience that was a gift because she’d thought she’d never have these feelings.

  “Damara.” Her name sounded like a warning, and his fingers closed around her wrist.

  But he didn’t stop her when her hand moved down to his abs or back over his chest, up to his shoulders. He stood there, stock-still and waiting for whatever she’d ask of him.

  “I’m just checking,” she whispered, almost as if she was afraid someone would hear her.

  “For what?” he whispered back.

  “That everything is still present and accounted for. Everything still works.”

  “Oh, it works.” He leaned down to her ear. “It works really hard.”

  Her face flamed. “Of course you’d say that. One of my bodyguards told me that men were like the monkeys in an experiment she’d read about at university. When given the choice between buttons that would provide pleasure or food, they’d hit the pleasure button until they starved to death.”

  He took control of her explorations and pulled both her hands down to his abs. “I’ve been eating. That’s not starving, is it?”

  She laughed. “No, but you’re hurt.”

  “Yeah, I’m in all kinds of pain. Right here.” He pushed her hands lightly toward the waist of his fatigues.

  She didn’t need any further guidance. “You think so? Is this your reward for saving the maiden fair?”

  “No.” He put his hand over her heart the same as she’d done to him. “This is my reward for saving the maiden fair.”

  She knew that he meant her breath, her heartbeat, her life, but he was so right. All of her belonged to him.

  “The Jewel of Castallegna.” He brushed his lips against her cheek.

  She shivered, loving his touch but not his words. “No, I’m not the Jewel any longer.”

  “It’s not just the shape of your face or the curve of your hips, Damara. It’s you.” He pushed her T-shirt up over her head and tossed it to the floor. “There’s a reason you’re the Jewel of Castallegna, and it has nothing to do with the pretty sheen of your hair or your lovely breasts.”

  She knew what it was. It was what was between her thighs, her womb, because she would ensure the succession of the throne. Or so it had been thought.

  “Whatever you were thinking about that made you scowl like that, it’s not true.”

  Damara decided she didn’t like this game. These things were still too tender, too raw. She didn’t want him to see them because she feared if he did, he wouldn’t have the same opinion of her. He’d realize that she was just a woman with no special powers. She couldn’t do the things he did, and she was just a damsel in distress with more ideas than ways to implement them.

  “I saw that you were the Jewel because of the light that’s inside you, and it shines so bright, glitters. Just like a precious stone caught in some brilliant light.”

  “You sound like a poet.” She couldn’t bring herself to comment on the content of his remark, so she focused instead on the words themselves.

  “I’ve never been any better with words than I am with people, Damara. That’s all you.” He kissed her mouth with a tender reverence she didn’t know he was capable of.

  In that moment, Damara believed she was the most beautiful woman in the world. The most treasured.

  The most loved. It was such a pretty fantasy; it was so easy to surrender. She let herself forget that she was a job, a mission, and that it was “his honor to serve her.” She forgot that he’d said he didn’t want her, because right now, he did.

  And it made it that much harder to swallow the words on her tongue. So instead she surrendered to the sensation, lost herself in his hands, his mouth and his touch.

  She let herself drown in the connection between them, that moment when nothing mattered but each other. It was as if her body was not her own; she writhed and arched, begged and moaned. Damara would do anything to keep feeling the bliss he gave her.

  She learned that he liked it when she used her nails on his back just a little bit, that he liked it when she was loud, when she spoke of the things she wanted him to do to her. She learned that the more she turned him on, the longer he played with her, taunted her and dragged out her pleasure.

  His body was becoming more familiar to her, and it no longer seemed taboo to touch him anywhere she chose.

  Damara loved dragging her hands over his biceps, and his back—his shoulders. She especially loved his butt. It was perfect for grabbing and kneading while he thrust into her.

  She loved everything about him. Especially his scars. They were what made him perfect. His flesh wasn’t ruined, but it was obvious he didn’t sit in an office for a living.

  With his scarred hands on her breasts, teasing the puckered buds of her nipples, she’d have sworn he hung the stars in the sky.

  He moved inside her, his body seeming to be too big, too hard for her to accommodate, and yet she did and took the utmost pleasure in it.

  Especially when he buried his face in her neck and they clung together while passion racked them both.

  * * *

  BYRON’S CHEST BURNED like a bastard, but there was no way he’d turn her down. The clock was quickly ticking down on their time together, and he wanted to remember everything about Damara that he could.

  For all her talk that he was some kind of poet, he wasn’t. He was a simple man with no way to express the complex things she wrought in him. He tried to tell her with his body what he couldn’t—shouldn’t—with words. If he told her that he loved her, it would only make things harder for them when they had to go their separate ways.

  Part of him wanted her to know. She’d changed him. He’d never think he deserved her, and he still bore the guilt of his past actions and failures, but thus far he’d been responsible for her. He’d protected her.

  He’d kept her safe.

  That wasn’t something he’d thought he was capable of doing.

  He looked at her face and decided that maybe even in her heart, she was his. That was a dangerous thought. If he allowed himself to think of her as his, he didn’t know how he’d ever let her go.

  Byron wasn’t a good enough man to acknowledge his love for her and then release her. He w
as too selfish.

  Although he supposed this trip to Castallegna would do it for him.

  Her unwavering belief in his goodness would be crushed. At first, he thought it would melt away like spun sugar. There were lots of things about Damara that were delicate and sweet, but once spun sugar was gone, it just dissolved, leaving only a sticky residue that faded. But not her belief in him. It would be more like glass or iron nails. After it was broken, it would stab into her.

  Byron was in love with his wife, and when she walked down the aisle, it would be a mockery of everything he wasn’t supposed to want. But he knew it was as close as he’d get to ever having the real thing.

  She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “What?”

  “Just thinking.”

  “Stop it.”

  He laughed, but there was no mirth. “I wish I could sometimes.”

  She sighed. “Me, too.”

  “You’re my wife, Damara,” he said before he could think better of it. He should have kept his mouth shut. No reason to point out the obvious because it was like a bramble of thorns. There was no way to pick it up, to interact with the fact without it slicing into tender things.

  “There are worse things to be.”

  It was just a piece of a paper, a contract that was as easy to dissolve as the spun sugar he’d been going on about in his own head. Spun sugar and poison. It didn’t mean anything.

  Only, it did mean something. It meant everything.

  He wanted to blame the holes in his chest for all of these feelings. It was as though they’d burrowed through all his defenses, leaving wounds not only in his chest but in that place where he locked down all the things he didn’t want to feel.

  “What’s wrong, Byron? Are you in pain? Did we tear something open?”

  “No, Princess. I’m fine.” He’d meant to use her title as a way to put some distance between them, but it had become an endearment.

  “No, Ranger. You’re not. Tell me.” Her palm was on his heart again, as if she was checking to see if it was still working.

  It was working overtime, working harder than it should. He couldn’t shut the damn thing off. “I’m sure this wasn’t what you’d imagined would happen when we met in Tunis.”

  She laughed, the sound sweet. “Oh, you’d never guess at some of the things that go through my head. I really am a silly little girl sometimes.”

  He remembered when she’d spoken of starlight and heroes, wishes and hope. He’d be those things for her, just not in the way she wanted. It was all he could do.

  “Your heart is beating so fast. What are you thinking about?”

  “Things better left for the moment they happen.” Any other answer that had sprung to his lips was better left to dust.

  “Oh.” Her voice was a whisper. “When you decide to take a life, how do you do it?”

  “What?” He peered down at her.

  “How do you know it’s the right thing? How do you know—I mean...it’s forever.” Coming from anyone else, he might have thought the question to be rhetorical, some introduction to a debate, but from Damara, she really wanted to know.

  “Yes, it is forever,” he acknowledged.

  “Are you going to answer the question?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Why not? Because he couldn’t answer her. He couldn’t put those things in her head, the things he’d seen. Worse, the things he’d done. “Because it doesn’t matter.”

  “I think it does. I mean, you don’t just grab a list of names and throw a dart at the wall. Right?”

  “I do what my commanding officer tells me to do.”

  “You were a commanding officer. If you’d caught those guerrillas, would you have killed them?” She searched his face for some deeper meaning to his answers.

  He didn’t know if she was looking for his redemption or a way to make it right, but he didn’t have anything to offer her.

  “If I had to. Ideally, they’d be tried for war crimes and human rights violations.” Yes, ideally, justice would be served. But in his reality, he’d have rather just slit their throats and been done. If they’d crept up on them in the night, if they hadn’t tried to take them back to stand to pay for their crimes...

  “They killed a lot of people?” she asked softly.

  Scenes of the villages those guerillas had raided flooded his mind. Those were images he’d never get out of his head. Even with all the horror he’d already shared with her, this was a step further than he’d take her—or anyone else. “Horrifically.”

  “Then why can’t my brother be tried for his crimes?”

  He tried not to bristle at her question. “Because as long as he draws breath, he is a threat to you and Castallegna.”

  “What if he were sent to prison in—”

  “Bratva can get into any prison, Damara. They can find him and use him, or be used by him wherever he’s sent.”

  “Maybe like the days of old when royalty was bad I could just lock him in a tower.” She sighed. “Please don’t hurt him, Byron.”

  The plea in her voice was almost enough to make a man forget his vows, his honor. He’d lost it once before. He wouldn’t lose it again.

  “We shouldn’t talk about this now.”

  “When will we talk about it, Byron? When we’re flying into Marseille? When we’re docking at Castallegna? When I’m crying at a state funeral over my brother’s body?”

  They wouldn’t talk about it; there was nothing left to say. He’d do what had to be done and that would have to stand for his goodbye.

  His chest hurt, and it was more than just his healing wounds.

  “I’m going to tell you this just once and then we don’t have to speak of it again. I want you to take this with you when this is over. Remember it.”

  He reached out and touched her cheek.

  “When you walk down that aisle on Friday, with Christmas candles burning and the smell of holly and evergreen in the air, that’s the only time that’s ever going to happen for me. I never wanted to get married, have a family. So, that’s okay. And I know this is a farce, but for those few hours when we say our vows, when we have the reception, when we do all those things that people are supposed to do, it will be real.”

  Her bottom lip trembled.

  “It could be real forever,” she whispered. “If you wanted it to be.”

  “By not doing my duty? By you not doing yours? There’s no happy ending for us. The best we can hope for is to save Castallegna and you.”

  “You could stay.” Her voice was so quiet he almost couldn’t hear it.

  “I couldn’t. What would you do with me? What would I do with myself? There’s a darkness in me, Princess. It’s why I’m good at what I do.” He didn’t make mention of Abele again, but he knew that she wouldn’t want him there after he did what had to be done.

  “I could stay with you.”

  “Damara.” He realized he sounded as shocked as the school principal who’d caught him selling his dad’s smokes for a dollar each in the boys’ bathroom.

  “I know. I couldn’t, could I? No matter how much I want to.” Damara shook her head slowly as if the facts of the situation had just become something solid and tangible.

  She buried her face in his neck. He’d give almost anything to keep her there.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  IT WILL BE REAL.

  Those were the words that Byron Hawkins had said to her about their wedding. He loved her. This ceremony that was just supposed to be a show, a publicity stunt, a tool—it had sped way past pretend a long time ago.

  “Are you ready, Damara?” Sonja stood outside the dressing room with her trusty clipboard.

  She laughed nervously and checked herself in the mirror. �
�Not quite.” Damara still had to apply her cosmetics.

  “I told you that we have someone to do that for you.” Sonja clucked over her like a mother hen.

  “No, no. I need to do it myself. I’ll be out in a few.” Damara leaned forward in the cup of her hands, studying her face in the mirror again.

  “I wish you were here, Mama.” She sighed at the mirror. “You, too, Papa. And you could tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

  She’d dreamed of her wedding day when she was young, thinking about the handsome prince and his crown. He’d be strong and smart, kind and gentle. Her mama would dress her hair and help her with her dress, and her papa would walk her down the aisle, his steady hand guiding her toward her future.

  Damara supposed she’d gotten part of it right.

  Her prince was strong, smart and gentle with her. There was a kindness in him that had been beaten down, crushed out of him, but that made the beautiful things inside him all the more precious.

  She picked up the tube of red lipstick, and it glided smoothly over her lips. Damara remembered her mother showing her how to do it just so, all those hours at her knee before state functions.

  Damara took one last look at herself, looking for traces in her own face of people she’d loved and lost.

  She saw her mother’s eyes, her father’s nose. More than that, she felt their presence in her heart. Her love for them was with her, so that would have to be enough.

  Whatever happened from here on out, Damara knew that this was real for her, too. She’d pledged her heart to this man, and it was no farce, no act. And when it was all over, she’d carry him in the same place she carried the memories of her parents.

  She finished applying the rest of her makeup. When she opened the door, she saw Sonja standing there with a tiara of twined holly and roses.

  “You look beautiful, Princess.” She affixed the tiara to Damara’s hair. “I think we’re ready.”

  Dread knotted her gut. Not because of what it would be like to walk down the aisle to face the man she loved, but what came after. She exhaled, trying to push all her doubts and fears away. She had faith in him and herself.