by Katee Robert
“I don’t know if okay is a good word for it.” Cami fiddled with the hem of her shirt, all confined nervous movement. “He won’t come back to Thalania, and our father couldn’t convince him to change his mind. Lady Nibley thinks Theo can succeed where our father failed.”
She didn’t check the clock ticking on the table next to the door, but Meg could practically feel Alys’s impatience on the other side. “Cami,” she said gently. “While I’m sure that’s very tragic for the Nibley family, I’m a little confused on why it’s got you lurking in the hallways.”
“We’re promised.”
Meg blinked. “What?”
“When we were children, our parents had an arrangement in which I was promised to him.” Cami stared hard at the floral pattern on the rug beneath their feet. “He went missing almost immediately after, but he’s been found and I’m sure Lady Nibley will want to see it brought to fruition.”
She was still trying to catch up. “But… Does Theo know? I can’t imagine he’d authorize his little sister playing the part of a child bride.”
“It’s nothing like that.” Cami made a face. “I get a choice, of course. My father always stressed that part. It’s just…” She hesitated and, for a moment, Meg was sure she’d wilt. She underestimated the princess. Cami jerked her chin up and her shoulders back, meeting her gaze directly. “No one ever tells me anything. If my brother is organizing a retrieval of my so-called betrothed, I should be involved. I know I’m only sixteen, but at my age, Theo was already running some of our father’s operations within the country. Edward was in training in addition to his schooling. I’m just… here.”
Ah. Feeling useless wasn’t something Meg had ever dealt with—at least not as a teenager. She’d been too focused on getting out of the hellhole she grew up in to worry about her place in life. All she’d cared about was that it wasn’t there, in that trailer, following in the footsteps of the mother who seemed intent on drinking herself to death and bringing everyone in her life down alongside her. There hadn’t been time for doubt. There was only Meg’s plan. “What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.” She finally dropped her gaze. “I don’t even know what my options are. I don’t want to marry some guy who I haven’t seen since I was four.” She lowered her voice. “And he was so old.”
From what Meg understood, Cami should have had more freedom than either of her brothers when it came to who she married. Her children would likely never end up on the throne, so it should have allotted her a wider choice in partners. “How about this?” Meg pushed to her feet. “Why don’t you meet me after I have tea with Noemi, and we’ll sit down and figure something out? If you want to be treated like an adult, then going to Theo directly instead of sneaking around is your best bet.” Cami would have to find a way to pin him in place long enough to have that conversation, but Meg would help. It was the least she could do that this point—and it had the bonus of being something she actually wanted to do.
“You’d do that?”
“Of course.” She took the girl’s hand and gave it what she hoped was a comforting squeeze. “Now, come on. I think Alys might have a stroke if I’m late for this tea.”
“You’re probably right.” Cami made a face. “Tea with Noemi, huh?”
There was such a teenager tone of disgust in her voice that Meg burst out laughing. “I take it you’re not a fan?”
“Oh, it’s not that exactly. She’s nice enough—nicer than a lot of the other nobles. She’s just…” Cami made a vague gesture. “Perfect. Every time I’m in the same room as her, I feel like I’m looking in one of those backlit makeup mirrors that display your every pore and imperfection. I feel dull.”
Meg cast a critical look over the girl. Cami was anything but dull. She had inherited her father’s bone structure—same as Theo had—and if she stopped doing her best to blend into the background, she would own any room she walked into. Part of that would come with age and confidence, but maybe Meg could help her out on that note, too. She was hardly a fashionista, but she was old enough to know a few tricks. That said… “Do you want the kind of attention Noemi gets?”
Cami hesitated. “No, not really. Maybe at some point but… No. I already feel like I live under a microscope as it is and the last thing I want right now is more of that.”
The teen years. Meg could still vividly remember the push and pull of wanting to fit in with everyone else and wanting to stand out in a way that made other girls in her grade shine. She’d never discovered the knack for it, but then, very few people did. “Come on.” She pulled Cami to her feet and led the way to the door.
Alys met them there, her blue eyes wide. “Cami, the King is looking for you.” She shot a panicked glance at Meg. “Can you find your way to the tea room down on the main floor? Just follow this hallway to the stairs, down them, two lefts, one right, and it’s the third door on the right.”
Meg did her best to memorize the harried instructions. “I’ve got it.” She gave Cami’s hand another squeeze. “Come find me later if you need me.”
“I will. And Meg? Thanks.” Cami hurried off with Alys, leaving Meg staring after them. She didn’t let herself think about the conversation too long. Palace life was complicated enough without her showing up late for tea. Noemi had never done anything truly terrible—or even been rude—but that feeling of being three inches tall was a sensation Meg shared with Cami. Even though she knew better, she couldn’t help comparing herself to the other woman.
Damn it, she knew better than to indulge in that kind of thinking.
They weren’t in competition with each other across any platform, and disliking Noemi just because she was beautiful and poised and perfect was a bitchy thing to do. Meg’s best friend from New York would reach across the damn ocean to slap some sense into her if she knew how Meg was letting this whole thing get to her.
She started down the hallway, picking up her pace. No, she couldn’t do a damn thing about being late today, but she would stop dodging the other woman. Noemi may never be a friend, but Meg wouldn’t know one way or another unless she gave the woman a chance. Today, she’d do exactly that. She reached the top of the stairs, but a rustling sound behind her stopped her in her tracks. The small hairs on the back of Meg’s neck raised and she started to turn to see who was behind her.
She never got the chance.
Hands planted themselves on her upper back and shoved. Meg screamed and scrambled for the bannister, but it was too late. She tipped over the edge and down the stairs.
4
Theo rushed through the palace, ignoring people who called his name or tried to get his attention. Four words repeated in his head, delivered by his pale and shaking sister. There’s been an accident. An accident involving Meg. A fall. A doctor was already with her.
And he’d just now been told.
He knew he should slow down, knew that sprinting down the hallways wasn’t something a king was supposed to do, but his rational brain took a backseat to the need to see her. To make sure she was okay. No, not okay. If she was okay, she wouldn’t have had an accident. He reached the private wing and burst through the door, barely pausing to shut it behind him before he ran into the bedroom.
Meg lay on the bed and she held up a hand the second she saw him. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
Doctor Oakes didn’t glance up from the bandage he was applying to her arm. “She had the fortune of getting her arm through the bannister before she fell too far. It dislocated her shoulder, which I’ve corrected. It will be sore, and depending on how she’s feeling in the morning, she should wear a sling at least until jarring it doesn’t cause any level of discomfort. The rest are just bruises that look alarming, but have caused no lasting damage.”
Meg didn’t look alarming. She looked like she’d been dragged behind a fucking car.
A bruise spread across one side of her face and it was already darkening to a truly terrifying shade of purple. Theo traced its path with his gaze,
his stomach lurching when he realized how close she’d come to hitting her temple. Her cheekbone had taken the worst of the damage, but a few inches to the side and they might not be having this conversation right now. “What happened?”
She met his eyes and lied to his face. “I fell.”
Goddamn it, princess, what the fuck are you thinking? Theo turned away, shoving his rage into a spot deep inside. Now wasn’t the time or place for an emotional response, no matter how furious he was over her lying about something this important. He looked around the room, only now registering that Galen wasn’t present. “Where is he?”
“Not in the palace.”
Theo sent her a sharp look. Surely… The thought didn’t bother to complete itself. Galen would sooner throw himself out a window than lay a hand on Meg. Theo pulled out his phone and, after the slightest hesitation, walked into the bathroom and shut the door behind him. He trusted Meg, and he trusted the doctor to take care of Meg, but she was lying to him and he didn’t know why. Better to have this conversation privately.
Galen picked up on the second ring. “What happened?”
Something small and painful lodged in Theo’s chest. Of course Galen would know that his calling in the middle of the day meant an emergency and wasn’t simply because Theo wanted to talk to him. Where did this go so wrong? He set the question aside, just like he’d been setting personal things aside for the last six months. Theo stopped being just a person the second the crown rested on his head. He was the King of Thalania, and as Galen used to be so fond of telling him, his happiness didn’t mean shit in the grand scheme of things.
“Theo?”
“Meg’s hurt.” Two little words to encompass the fear that still clamped around his chest, a vise he didn’t know how to loosen. “There was no lasting damage, but she dislocated her shoulder and she looks like shit.” He glanced at the door. “She says she fell, but—”
“But that’s bullshit. Did anyone see anything?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t have time to conduct a full investigation as I was sprinting through the halls.” He hadn’t even thought to check the cameras to see what they’d caught.
The background noise on the line increased, as if Galen had stepped out of a building or car. “I’ll take care of it. Stay with her until I get back. Once we know what happened, we’ll figure out the next steps.”
As if he’d leave Meg in her current condition. Galen doesn’t know that, not anymore. The feeling in his chest got worse. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good.” Galen hung up.
Once upon a time, Galen never would have thought to question Theo staying by Meg’s side until they knew for sure what had happened—and that the threat had passed. Something else to be dealt with later. The number of things they never quite got around to talking about only grew over time. If they weren’t careful, it would crush them.
Theo took a moment to splash some water onto his face and, when he finally walked back into the bedroom, he had his kingly mask back in place. The doctor was packing up his things. “There is a bottle of pain medication on the nightstand. Maybe you can talk some sense into her.” He gave a short bow and left the room.
“His bedside manner is almost as crappy as Galen’s.” Meg leaned against a small mountain of pillows, watching him. When they first met, every thought flickered across her features, there for the reading. Somewhere along the way, his princess had learned to lie. Or maybe she’d always known and never bothered with the skill until recently. Impossible to say.
He picked up the orange bottle of little white pills and considered them. “You’ll have one before you go to sleep.”
“Theo.” She shook her head and winced. “I’m not taking anything more than ibuprofen, and you damn well know it.”
“They won’t make you sick if you’re unconscious.” He set the bottle back down and climbed onto the mattress to sit next to her. For the first time in as long as they’d known each other, he didn’t know how to move forward. She lied to him, and not about something mundane or meaningless. But then, Meg always knew where to best play her cards, even when she was in over her head. “Let me hold you, princess?”
She twisted carefully to face him. “Are you asking me or telling me?”
Fuck, he didn’t know how to do this. Theo didn’t do unsure. He came into this world knowing his place and even when that place was temporarily lost to him, he never doubted for an instant that it was his. Even with Galen, he’d always taken for granted that they would find a way forward, a way to be together. When he met Meg, she became included in that assumption. They fit, and so they would figure it out.
He couldn’t assume anything anymore.
“I’m asking.”
Meg scooted closer, and he carefully put his arm around her and waited while she arranged herself against his side. She sighed. “This is a mess.”
“How are you feeling?” Careful, tentative question.
She shifted closer. “I feel like shit. My face is one big throbbing pain and my shoulder chimes in with every breath to let me know how pissed off it is.”
He sifted his fingers through her hair, ensuring he stayed well away from her bruised cheekbone. “It could have been a lot worse. Those stairs killed my great-great-aunt.”
“Of course they did.” She huffed out a sound that might have been a laugh under different circumstances. “Is there any part of this palace that isn’t haunted by the actions and deaths of your family?”
He wished he had a different answer to the question. “No. Thalania likes its history, even the ugly parts.” Especially the ugly parts, in some cases.
“How are we doing, Theo? And before you give me some pat answer, I mean how are we really doing? It’s been six months. Are you making any progress?”
He wanted to give her a pat response, to soothe away the worry evident in her tone. But Theo couldn’t demand honesty—something he fully intended on doing—if he wasn’t willing to give her honesty in return. “It’s slow. Really slow. Three of the Families have decided that they’re not interested in actively working with me, though they haven’t gone so far as to work against my policies yet. Huxley is out. Lady Nibley is in, with the condition of a favor.”
“Her grandson.”
He smiled against her hair. “So you heard about that.”
“How does she expect you to do something no one in her family has been able to?”
“I’m the King.” Such a simple answer, and yet so fucking complex. He’d been trained to ride these ebbs and flows of politics since he was a child, but Theo never remembered it being so exhausting. My father was alive before. I hadn’t realized how much his presence shielded me until it was gone. Until he was gone.
“Being King doesn’t mean you’re a god.” She draped her arm over his stomach and exhaled. “God, this hurts.”
“I know, princess.” He pressed a soft kiss to her unmarked temple. “Do you want to tell me the truth about what happened or should we wait for Galen to view the video and let him yell at you once he gets back to the room?”
She tensed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I fell—”
He spoke right over her, his earlier fear surging up and pouring out of his mouth in the form of anger. “What I don’t understand is why you’re bothering to lie at all. You didn’t fall down those stairs, Meg, so don’t treat me like a fucking idiot by saying you did.”
“Maybe I didn’t want you to react like this and start storming through the palace looking for the responsible party. If I knew who’d done it, I would have told you, but it’s just some nameless person and I can’t have you on a rampage when you’re already walking a fine enough line as it is.”
Fuck him.
She wasn’t lying for whatever the hell he’d thought her misguided reasoning was. She was lying to protect him.
Theo sagged back against the headboard and stared at the ceiling. “You hav
e to be able to talk to me, Meg. You have to trust that I’m not going to react like… I don’t even know what the fuck to call that. You have to know I can handle it.”
“I know you can handle it. That’s not what I’m saying.” She kept her head tucked against his chest, making it impossible to look into her eyes. “You just shouldn’t have to.”
“This isn’t some petty bullshit. You could have died.” Saying the words slammed him back into the car crash seven months ago that was no more an accident than her fall had been. To seeing Meg, pale and unconscious, too much of her blood covering the ground around her.
It could happen again.
It almost had.
Theo had to concentrate to keep his hold on her light and not clutch her to him as if he could keep her safe from whoever meant her harm. He’d already proven abysmal at it. She was in this situation because of him. “Do you want to leave?”
Meg shot up, nearly clipping his chin with the top of her head. “Don’t you dare.”
“Don’t I dare, what?”
She sat back and raised a shaking finger to wave it in his face. “Don’t you dare try to send me away. We went over this last time. I’m not going anywhere, and damn you to hell for even thinking of suggesting it.” She glared, the effect only stronger by the impressive bruise coloring the side of her face. “Do you love me, Theo?”
If he was smart, he’d lie to her. Tell her that yes, he cared about her, but it was best if she went back to New York, back to her safe life and her equally safe plan for the future. The worst she had to deal with back there was drunk bar patrons, and Meg had already proved herself more than capable. She wouldn’t be in active danger in New York.
But Theo had promised her honesty. “Yes, I love you.”
“Then let’s not play the guilt game. This isn’t your fault, and trying to send me away is just going to result in a fight that you won’t win.”
“Meg—”
The door opened and heavy footsteps signaled Galen’s arrival. The fact that they heard him at all was a testament to how worried he was. Normally, he was more ghost than man.