The thought of her suffering spurred him forward, though exhaustion clawed relentlessly at his dry eyes. He’d promised Lily he would keep her safe, but more than that, his pounding heart threatened to burst at the thought of anything happening to her. He recalled the way she’d stubbornly insisted on moving forward, refusing to give up hope even when his hope had dimmed. He couldn’t fail her.
Besides, he’d wanted for some time to kiss her, and told himself he would before the desert defeated them.
“Come on, boy.” He prodded the horse onward, the thought of kissing Lillian spurring him forward even more than the threats that lay behind him.
The sun had rounded the dome of the sky and the shadows darkened every ripple of sand when Alec’s bleary eyes caught sight of a shape in front of him. Through the haze of heat he made out a rock formation, with a horse and rider planted unmoving beneath.
Lillian.
He urged his horse to a gallop, his eyes never once leaving her face. Was she okay? She wasn’t moving. Had she passed out? Was the heat too much for her? With growing concern, he recalled from his training the grim prognosis for heatstroke. Without immediate medical treatment, even a seasoned soldier could die quickly after the onset of symptoms.
Alec surveyed the way Lillian slumped against her horse’s neck. She didn’t raise her eyes at his approach, or make the slightest move to indicate she was conscious, or even alive.
Slowing his horse as they approached, Alec slid from the saddle, still gripping the reins, and put a hand to Lillian’s forehead. She didn’t feel cool and clammy—which would have been an awful sign. She didn’t feel frighteningly hot, but neither did she twitch at his touch.
Quickly looping his horse’s reins through the Arabian’s simple rope halter, he secured the animals together and wrapped his arms around Lillian’s limp body, pulling her down from the horse.
She slumped against him, and her eyelids fluttered as her cheek rested against his chest.
He grabbed a bottle of soda from his saddlebag and tipped the strawberry-flavored liquid to her lips. It pooled in her mouth before she sputtered, then swallowed.
Her eyes opened.
“Another drink?” he offered.
She looked disoriented, but opened her mouth, and he raised the bottle to her lips. She took a few more sips, then shifted against him, putting some of her weight on her feet. “More?” She reached for the bottle.
He handed it to her, but warned, “Slowly.”
While she quenched her thirst, he opened a canteen and downed several gulps. It had been a long day, and a long ride, but not even the taste of water was as much a relief to him as the sight of Lily leaning against him, sipping strawberry soda.
She looked up at him and let out a sigh, her strawberry-scented breath enticing him.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I think so. I was worried about you. What happened?”
“The men who took our picture followed me. Seems your uncle David has put a price on my head.”
Concern filled her features and she opened her mouth as though to apologize again.
Alec leaned down and, before she could say anything, he kissed her.
The move must have caught her by surprise, because she froze a full second before kissing him back.
He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer. Her kisses were more refreshing than the water at the oasis after their long journey through the desert, and far more intoxicating. Relief at finding her unharmed combined with the attraction he’d been denying through the journey, made her irresistible.
Besides, she certainly seemed to be enjoying kissing him.
It wasn’t until the horses snorted impatiently that Alec remembered they didn’t have time for such indulgences. Bardici’s men might find them at any time.
Reluctantly, he took a step back, leaving a final, light kiss on the tip of her nose as he pulled himself away. “We need…” He cleared his throat, trying to think, half tempted to take her in his arms again.
But Lillian seemed to grasp the situation, as well. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t…” She raised her fingers as though to erase the kiss, but then seemed to realize she couldn’t, or didn’t want to.
“Shouldn’t?” he questioned. “I started it.”
“But you’re royalty.”
“And?”
“I probably shouldn’t even touch you, should I?”
The sincere trepidation on her face made him smile. “Is that why you’ve been pulling your hands back every time you start to reach for me?”
Her blush told him she’d hoped he hadn’t noticed.
He wanted to kiss her again, but didn’t think he’d have the strength to pull himself away a second time. “You don’t need to keep your distance.” He still had her mostly in his arms, which only reinforced his point.
Still, she looked unconvinced. “But our families are enemies.”
“That doesn’t change how I feel about you.” He watched as her eyes widened. “Does it influence your feelings toward me?”
“Only that I feel awful for what my uncle has done.”
Glad that she hadn’t denied her apparent affection for him, nonetheless, at the mention of the general, Alec was reminded of all that still lay ahead of them. “I need to sort out how your family is connected to the attack on my family. Night is falling. We can talk while we travel.”
“Where are we going?”
“North.”
“But…” Lillian took a half step back from him and looked around, as if verifying her bearings. “After we left my uncle’s fortress, we traveled southwest, and now east again. If we go north we’ll end up at his doorstep.”
“Precisely.”
“But—”
Alec pulled her close again, shushing her. “I spoke with one of the men who tried to capture me. There’s a pier nearly a kilometer up the shoreline from your uncle’s estate. I can’t help but think that your parents will be sailing toward there. David probably gave them the location. If they’ve made decent time, they should arrive some time tomorrow.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“I’m not sure, exactly, but I’d like to get back to Sardis, learn what’s happening there, find my sister and maybe the rest of my family.”
“How does heading to my uncle’s compound accomplish that?”
“Your parents have a boat. We’ve already determined we’re not going to get through any airports or across any borders without money or passports.” He grinned at her. “How good are you at sailing?”
“I can sail my parents’ yacht all by myself, if that’s what you’re asking, but Alec—”
He silenced her protests with a kiss, then pulled back just far enough to meet her eyes. “Do you trust me?”
A smile spread across her lips. “More than anyone.”
He couldn’t help grinning back as an odd, giddy sensation rippled through him. No one had ever made him feel like this before. Was this what it felt like to be in love? Now he understood why entire nations had fallen over the love of a woman. It was a powerful force, and made him feel as though he could cross the desert and back again just to be with Lillian.
He planted another kiss on her lips—this time, a kiss of promise. “It will all be all right. We need to get going.”
* * *
Lillian helped water the horses and shared a quick snack with Alec before they got on their way. Though she knew her body ought to be begging to rest, she felt almost as though she was dancing on air, and kept stealing glances at Alec as he worked, trading goofy grins with him every time she caught him looking her way.
Granted, he was a prince far outside of her league, and apparently the members of her extended
family were out to overthrow his family and maybe kill them, but that didn’t change the way she felt about him. And if his kisses were any indication, he felt the same way. If she’d had wings, she could have flown them back to Sardis.
Instead, as the sun dipped below the horizon and they pointed their horses north, Lillian worked up the courage to tell Alec everything she knew about her family history, including the painful details of her immediate past. She began with the Bardicis’ link to Lydia.
“My uncle David and my father were both born in Lydia, though they also had joint American citizenship, since both their parents were American. The way I understand it, my grandfather Bardici was an American businessman. My grandmother was the one with ties to Lydia. She’s the reason they moved to Lydia before their sons were born.”
“What was her name?”
“Helen. Before she married my grandfather, her last name was Valli, but I believe that was her first husband’s last name. Her maiden name was…” Lily watched the endless sand ripple under the moonlight as she tried to recall. “That’s strange.”
“What is?”
“I think her maiden name was Lydia. But that doesn’t make any sense, does it?” Even as she questioned her memory, Lillian couldn’t help thinking of the name badge Alec had worn above his medals on his soldier’s uniform the day she’d rescued him from the ambush.
“There are people in Lydia who have the last name Lydia.”
“Are there?”
“Yes,” Alec assured her. “All those who belong to the Royal House of Lydia use Lydia as their surname. If your grandmother’s last name was Lydia, she must have been a member of the royal family.”
TEN
“That can’t be right.” Lillian was grateful the horse she rode kept moving forward at a steady clip. If it had been up to her to keep herself moving, she’d have certainly stumbled. “How could my grandmother possibly be part of the royal family?” But even as she asked the question, she recalled snippets of conversations she’d overheard years before. Maybe it wasn’t so impossible.
“My father Philip was an only child,” Alec explained. “His father, who was also king before him, was the oldest of three. His two younger sisters married foreigners, but neither of them went to America, and neither of them were named Helen. We get Christmas cards from them every year.”
“My grandmother passed away eight years ago.”
“Then she can’t be the same person as either of my great aunts.” Alec looked thoughtful. “You say your grandmother Helen also had American citizenship? Where was she born?”
“In America, I believe. Her mother was from Greece and her father from Lydia.”
“What was her father’s name?”
Lillian tried to recall. “It was something foreign, almost British-sounding.”
“Basil?” Alec pulled his horse up short.
“Yes.” Lillian halted her mount as well as Alec slid from his saddle and knelt over an open stretch of sand that glimmered white in the moonlight.
“My great-grandfather’s name was Alexander.” Alec used the tip of his finger to draw a large A in the sand. “I’m named after him, so I studied quite a bit of his life story. He had an older half brother named Basil.” Alec sketched a B in the sand near the A he’d drawn.
Lillian felt her heart beating hard. If Alexander’s great-grandfather wasn’t the oldest, then why did his family inherit the throne?
Alec continued. “Basil’s mother died when he was born. His father remarried some years later, but Basil never liked his stepmother and didn’t get along well with the family. His grandfather was king then—he lived to a ripe old age—and his father was only a prince. Perhaps Basil never thought the throne would pass to him, or perhaps he didn’t care, but he abdicated and ran off to America to marry a Greek actress. He died a few years later. It seems to me that he had a daughter before he died, though.”
As he explained his family history, Alec drew a line from Basil and put an H below it. “If Basil’s daughter is your grandmother, Helen, that would explain why she had the last name Lydia—because she was a descendent of the royal house of Lydia.”
Lillian bent next to the rough family tree Alec had etched in the sand. Under her grandmother’s H she placed a D and M. “David and Michael—my uncle and father.”
“Do you have any cousins?”
“Uncle David has never married. I’m an only child.” She drew a line from the M and wrote an L to signify herself. Then she looked at the large empty patch under the letter A. “Where do you come in?”
“King Alexander was my great-grandfather. He came to the throne during World War One, and reigned for over sixty years. My grandfather was crowned in 1978 and reigned until he and his wife were killed in a helicopter crash eight years ago. That’s when my father ascended to the throne.” Alec drew four lines below his father’s name, marking them with a T, A, I, and another A.
“Thaddeus, Alexander, Isabelle, Anastasia.” He named them off as he drew them in.
Lily had to take a step back to take in the whole scope of the family tree. It looked like a complicated mess to her, each line of succession a tiny dividing wall of hostility between Alec’s family and hers. “Basil and Alexander.” She named the half brothers. “But it was so long ago. You wouldn’t think anyone would care anymore.”
“There’s a throne at stake. Perhaps your uncle and father feel that’s still worth caring about.”
“We should keep moving,” she told him, hoping he’d help boost her onto the back of her horse so they could leave the family tree far behind them.
Instead, Alec stepped close.
“What is it, Lillian?” He traced her cheekbone with his finger, and tipped her chin up gently until she looked in his eyes. “Something about this family tree bothers you.”
“Doesn’t it bother you? My great-grandfather walked away from the throne, and now my father and uncle seem intent on getting it back.” She looked at the letters in the sand while her eyes filled with tears, bits and pieces of things her father and uncle had said the week before now coming back to her with decoded meaning. She wished she could deny the truth of it, to erase it as easily as a swipe of her foot would erase the initials etched in the sand, but ultimately she knew truth was truth, regardless of her feelings about it. “It all makes sense now, doesn’t it? That’s why they attacked your family. That’s why—” She gasped as the pieces fell into place.
“What?”
“Your grandfather and grandmother died in a helicopter accident. What caused it?”
“Mechanical malfunction.” His jaw tightened. “You don’t think it was an accident?”
Lillian looked up at the stars blinking brightly above them. There were so many more layers of stars visible from the wide-open desert than she’d ever observed from the windows of the many homes and estates she’d grown up in. Homes and estates that her father had since liquidated, with the money disappearing from his coffers, drained to some ravenous void.
“My father used to be a very wealthy man. We had country homes, coastal homes, apartments in all the major cities… .” She worked up the courage to look Alec in the eye. “From what I’ve been able to piece together since I learned what my father was doing, he began selling off these properties about eight years ago, liquidating all his assets until now, all they have left is their yacht.”
Alec’s eyes bored into hers. “Do you think your father helped finance the accident that caused my grandparents’ helicopter wreck?”
“He financed something. That money is gone. I’m sure overturning a government is an expensive undertaking. They’d have to buy people’s allegiance, their cooperation—”
“Their silence.” Alec shook his head. “I was eighteen when my grandparents died suddenly, with little expl
anation. I asked my father why there wasn’t a more extensive inquiry into what caused the accident. He never gave me a satisfactory answer.”
Tears leaked down Lillian’s cheeks at the thought of a teenage Alec mourning his grandparents’ deaths, troubled by questions no one would answer. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.” A wry half smile bent the uninjured side of his face. “We can’t go back in time and change what happened. But I want you to think about this…” His finger traced her cheek again, and for a moment she thought he might be about to kiss her again. Instead he finished, “I was going to try to get back to Sardis as soon as possible. But there may be a reason why God has led us to this place. We’re in a unique position here. Knowing what we now know, I’m starting to think the best way I can help my family is by putting a stop to your uncle’s plans.”
The horses whinnied impatiently, but Alec’s eyes never left her face.
Lily could feel her heart thumping hard as she considered the implications of his evolving strategy. “I’ll do whatever I can to help you. I already offered to spy on them for you.”
But Alec shook his head. “I don’t want to push you into anything you might later regret doing.”
“My uncle pulled a gun on me.”
“You wouldn’t just be opposing your uncle. Siding with me would mean opposing your own parents. I know you’re upset with them, but they’re your parents. I won’t ask you to help me—”
“Alec, listen,” she interrupted him, “I know you love and respect your parents, but my family isn’t like yours. My entire childhood was one move after another, one nanny after another. I’d go days, even weeks at a time without seeing either of my folks, and they never seemed to care. I was a tool for them, a prop to be pulled out when having a child was expedient, and then they put me in storage like the rest of their toys when I wasn’t useful anymore.” In spite of her best efforts to remain indifferent as she recounted the events of her childhood, Lily heard an undercurrent of emotion cutting through her voice.
Alec must have heard it, too, because he reached for her again, wrapping her in the comfort of his embrace. “I’m sorry.”
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