He waits for my response.
I don’t offer one.
“Now that the funeral is behind us, we will be moving into the castle to officially mark the beginning of my reign.” He pauses again. “The East Wing is traditionally reserved for the heir apparent but, naturally, it is not currently available due to the fire. For the time being, you will occupy a suite in the North Wing, along with Chloe and Carter.”
I refrain from commenting.
“Eventually, we will restore the palace to its former glory. But we don’t want to appear too hasty in rebuilding. Not with Henry still…” he trails off.
I clench my jaw tighter.
The silence grows suffocating.
“Emilia.” He sighs, as though I’m being terribly tiresome. “I know you were hoping to avoid this outcome for a few more weeks, but we must face facts. The situation has changed. You no longer have the liberty of a choice in this matter. You are the Crown Princess of Germania. It is your birthright and your responsibility. And tomorrow, the whole world will watch as you finally accept it.”
I clear my throat, making sure I have control over my volume before I attempt to respond. “So, everything you said — everything you promised me before, about how I’d get to decide my own path… that was all bullshit?”
He leans back in his chair. “It was not bullshit. It was me, attempting to extend your childish illusion of freedom for a little while longer. A kindness, if you will.”
“A kindness?” I scoff bitterly. “You’re joking.”
“I do not have the luxury of making jokes. Not today.”
“If this is how you treat your family, I’d love to know how handle your enemies.”
“Disobey me and perhaps you shall,” he promises in a hard tone.
“Wow. You’ve stooped to petty threats, now? You’re a real piece of work.”
“Be that as it may, I am also a king with the weight of an entire country on my shoulders. Like it or not, your desires are not the only ones in Germania that concern me.” His eyes turn to emerald chips of ice. “Which is why you will be at that press conference tomorrow. You will act in a dignified manner. And you will verbally acknowledge your intent to take up the role of Crown Princess.”
“And if I don’t?”
He weighs his words carefully for a moment. “Then your house in Hawthorne goes on the market. I imagine, now that the people know their princess once lived there, it will sell quite quickly.”
“You can’t do that,” I gasp. “You’ve already paid off the mortgage! The house is mine, free and clear.”
“Is it?”
My blood runs cold. “What?”
He leans across the table toward me. “You see, I had a feeling we might run into a snag like this one at some point down the line. That’s why, instead of paying the bank the full amount owed in your name… I paid it in mine. Which means I now control a significant lien on your property.”
“But I still have the deed,” I insist, hardly believing my ears.
“If you research property law, you will find that the deed ceases to matter at a certain point — usually once your mortgage payments lapse and you fail to pay your property taxes.” His expression softens slightly. “For all intents and purposes, I have assumed all financial responsibility for your home, Emilia. It’s mine. And if you choose to walk away from your duty… You will have nowhere left to go.”
I go completely still, feeling that fault line of betrayal deep inside me open even wider. First Owen, now Linus.
How much treachery can one heart take in a single day?
Naively, I handed over the thing that matters most in the vain belief that my father would honor his word. That he would safeguard it.
Instead, he’s using it to control me.
What a fool I was, to trust this man. To fall for the fairy tale, despite every atom in my body screaming I should do otherwise.
Did you forget? There was a reason Mom hated him.
I thought, deep down, there might still be some sliver of paternal loyalty inside Linus’ soul. I see now how grave an error that was. He doesn’t give a shit about me. He doesn’t give a shit about anyone or anything except himself, his crown, and his legacy.
Ironically enough, it’s Octavia’s words I hear in this moment.
The only person Linus Lancaster serves is Linus Lancaster. You will find out for yourself just how little you matter to him, as soon as your interests stop aligning with his own.
She warned me this would happen, but I was either too stupid or too stubborn to listen to her. And as I sit there in my father’s office, feeling my careful plans fall to pieces, I nearly laugh at how artfully I have been outmaneuvered in this game we’re all playing.
It’s almost absurd: after today, the whole world thinks I’m royalty.
But I’m not a princess.
I’m a pawn.
Chapter Fifteen
I wind up right back where I first started — sitting in the dark on a cold stone bench in a forgotten garden. My eyes are wet. My heart is empty.
At least it’s not raining this time.
I’ve come full circle in the span of a week.
God, has it truly only been a week?
Everything’s changed so fast, from the scope of my future right down to the color of my hair. It’s hard to believe ten days ago, I was a regular girl on my way to class. My biggest worries consisted of midterm grades and whether the cute guy in my pharmacology lecture was flirting with me or just being friendly when he asked to go over our notes together after class.
I had a best friend. I had a home. I had a career path.
And now… I have no one.
Nothing.
Just a title I don’t want and a bottomless abyss of anguish swirling inside me like a black hole.
The tears drip faster, even when I arch my neck to stare up at the stars. Halfheartedly, I pick out a few constellations as I shiver and shake in my pretty black dress.
Ten minutes go by.
I wait.
Twenty.
I wait.
Thirty.
Forty.
Fifty.
I wait.
I wait.
I wait.
Because I think… some part of me knows he’ll come, even before he makes the conscious choice to leave the manor, far before I hear his voice in the darkness at my back.
“I see you’re back to your original plan.”
Carter.
My throat convulses. I don’t turn to look at him. I can’t. Not yet. Not with my face a mess of tears.
There’s a crunch of gravel as he walks up behind me. A second later, my shoulders are enveloped by warm fabric — his suit jacket, settling around me like a blanket. My fingers latch onto the lapels as his lips brush my ear.
“I thought we already ruled out you dying of exposure to avoid becoming the princess,” he murmurs.
I try to find words, but my throat is clogged by tears and grief and something else. Something I’m not ready to name just yet.
Carter sits down on the bench beside me. He’s so close, the heat of his strong thigh seeps into mine. I slide my arms inside his sleeves and try not to notice how much better I feel, just being near him.
“Are you okay?”
“No,” I croak. “No, I’m really not.”
“Is there anything…” He blows out a breath, as if he’s not sure how to say this properly. “Can I do anything to make this better for you?”
“You don’t happen to have a time machine?”
“Afraid not.”
“Cloak of invisibility?”
His head shakes.
“Then, no, Carter. I think I’m on my own.”
His hands curl around the stone bench seat. He’s practically thrumming with anger and frustration.
“It’s actually pretty funny,” I tell him in a hollow voice that isn’t funny at all. “I’m a psychology student. I study human behavior. I read all these books
about our capacity for manipulation and evil. About every atrocity we, as a species, have committed against one another over thousands of years. How we’ve actually evolved to be cruel and self-serving, rather than honest and true.” I pull in a shallow breath. “All that knowledge, right there at my fingertips… and still, I’m totally blindsided when it happens to me.”
“Emilia…” My name catches in his throat.
“Why did he do it?” I ask, another tear trickling out. “He’s my best friend. I’d do anything to protect him — even cut him out of my life when I need him most. But he… he decided to hurt me in the precise way he knew would inflict the most damage. How could he do that to me?” I feel like my heart has been ripped right out of my chest, leaving only a gaping hole behind. “And Linus… Linus…”
I can’t even begin to get the words out.
“Emilia, please look at me.”
I shake my head, still crying, and use his sleeve to mop the tears off my cheeks. “You should go. Just… leave me alone.”
“No.”
“I’m not good company at the moment, Carter.”
“I don’t give a shit. I’m not good company ever. But we all need someone sometimes. Someone to lean on.” He’s breathing hard. I can hear the rapid rise and fall of his chest as he watches me weep. “If you need to lean on someone tonight… I’ll be here.”
My breath hitches on a sob.
He’s whispering, now. Barely audible. “I’m here, love.”
It’s the love that breaks me. My head turns toward him and our eyes lock in the span of a heartbeat. And on any other night, I’d try to fight it — that magnetic tug I feel whenever I’m around him. But I don’t have any more fight left in me.
I gaze into his beautiful face, at the heartbreaking contradiction of tenderness and fear playing out on those gorgeous goddamned features, and I can’t stop myself from falling forward into his chest.
His arms come around me, crushing me to him. It’s not like our last hug — there’s no uncertainty, no hesitation. This one is fierce, fraught with need. The need to touch and cling to a man who isn’t going to rip the rug out from under me. At least, not right now.
I press my wet eyes against the column of his throat and hear him suck in a terse breath. My hands wind around his broad shoulders, then slide up to lace behind his neck as I flatten myself against him — chest to chest, heart to heart. And it’s totally crazy… but there, with our pulses racing in time to the same beat, I think that Carter might just be strong enough to bear the weight of dark despair inside me. Even if it’s only for a few minutes.
Hold me tightly.
Hold me together.
Hold me until this nightmare ends.
Hold me like you’ll never let me go.
We stay like that until my tears have slowed and my choppy breaths have leveled out. Feeling blessedly numb for the first time in hours, I lift my head to look at him.
Our faces align perfectly in the darkness. My fingers grip the back of his neck, where his hair curls slightly at the nape. A low sound rattles deep inside his throat — whether to warn me away or urge me closer, I’m not certain. His blue eyes burn so hot, flames of desire dance along my skin as I lean in, inch by careful inch. And before I can talk myself out of it…
I brush my lips against his.
It’s meant to be chaste. A simple thank you. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. But that small brush sparks into something else — something that soon blazes out of my control.
Carter’s hands lift to cup my tear-swollen face. My fingertips dig tight against the back of his neck. And quite suddenly, with no warning at all, he’s kissing me.
Or maybe I’m kissing him.
I’m not sure who moves first.
I’m not sure it matters.
The only thing I know with certainty is, now that it’s happening, there’s no turning back. Never mind that it’s wrong. Forbidden. Doomed. Never mind that it never should’ve happened.
A brush. A spark.
A kiss. A wildfire.
We are an inferno. A combustible, uncontrollable flame. With a hungry groan, his tongue spears into my mouth — teasing, tasting, consuming — and I can’t help the cry that tears from my throat.
Yes.
God, yes.
I didn’t realize how much I craved his touch until I felt his big hands moving over my skin. How much I wanted this — his grip sliding back into my hair, his teeth nipping at my bottom lip, his hard body flush against mine.
Or, maybe I did realize, I just didn’t acknowledge it. Not even to myself, except in the darkest corners of my mind when I’d replay that first night we met. That spark I felt, even then, when we were two strangers in the backseat of an SUV, without any names or futures or families to hold us back.
The kiss turns desperate, ravenous. We cling tightly, a rising tide of passion sweeping us both away until any chance of turning back is lost to the undertow. His hands slide down my body, exploring the curves of my waist, searching for any exposed patch of skin he can caress. I try to maneuver myself onto his lap but my damn dress is so tight, it’s impossible to straddle him. Rife with impatience, Carter reaches down to the side slit of my skirt and promptly tears it from upper-calf to upper-thigh. My eyes go wide at the sound of fabric ripping as he does the same to the other side.
A second later, I no longer care that he’s reduced my dress to ribbons, because he pulls me down onto his lap. My knees hit the stone bench on either side of his thighs as I plant myself firmly against him. A bolt of pure, unadulterated lust shoots straight between my legs as I feel the evidence of his desire for me — his long, hard cock, throbbing with need even through the fabric of his pants.
“God, Emilia,” he groans against my neck, gripping me so hard it’s almost painful. I clutch him back just as tight, grounding myself in his touch. Needing to feel something besides grief and sadness and heartache. But even as he holds me steady, I’m spinning out of control. I can feel it happening, and I’m powerless to stop it.
A shout in a silent crowd.
A thousand camera flashes.
A cruel knife to the back.
I kiss him harder, hoping it’ll block the memories I don’t want to see, the emotions I don’t want to feel. I need him to take hold of me until my world makes sense again, to touch me until I forget everything that’s happened since I came to this godforsaken place.
Octavia.
Linus.
Owen.
He nips along my jawline, kissing and biting and teasing his way back to my mouth. I revel in the harsh press of his fingers against my back as our lips tangle together again. Some twisted part of me hopes he leaves marks on my skin, so tomorrow when I wake up, I have proof this wasn’t some fragment of a dream.
In my head, I know being with Carter is messy and broken and wrong. But somehow, as he lowers me backward onto the stone bench, he’s the only thing in my whole horrible life that feels totally, completely right. My body is a lit fuse, every nerve ending sizzling as his weight comes down on top of me.
I need him.
I need this.
To feel dominated by my choice, not by someone else’s design.
There’s a certain sort of beauty in submission. At least, in the kind Carter is slowly inflicting on me with each sweep of his tongue, each stroke of his hands. I am coming undone beneath him, unraveling into something I hardly recognize.
Maybe if he touches me long enough, I’ll fade into him.
Cease to exist at all.
Just a memory of a girl on a cold stone bench.
I arch up against him, totally lost in his touch. He gazes down at me and I see a flicker of something in his eyes — not lust, not need.
Concern.
“Emilia,” he whispers, pulling back a fraction.
I try to grab him, to crush his lips to mine again until the world blurs out of focus, but he’s too strong.
“Kiss me,” I plead, voice ragged with desire a
nd despair.
“But you’re crying.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
He sits up, pulling me with him. His brows tug inward as his big hands squeeze my biceps. “What do you mean, it doesn’t matter? Of course it matters.”
“No. It really doesn’t.” I try to kiss him again, but he’s holding me at arm’s length. It pisses me off. “Jesus Christ, Carter, don’t you get it? Nothing I do makes a damn bit of difference in the outcome of this game. Nothing matters. None of this. Not you, not me, not anything we do together.”
He flinches like I’ve struck him, but I barely notice. A dam inside me has broken and all my darkness is spilling out in one great flood.
“None. Of. It. Matters. Not my father. Not my best friend. Not my house. Not my future. Not even my damn memories, because they took those too. Tune in to your local news tonight at five for the Emilia Lancaster show! Learn how her date stood her up for the senior prom! Hear neighbors talk about her tragic teen years! Then, at primetime, we’ll delve deep into her mother’s agonizing death!”
He’s breathing hard, staring at me like he doesn’t even recognize me.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I say, feeling something crumble inside me. Another fault line, this one made of broken dreams and bad intentions.
“How exactly am I looking at you, Emilia?”
My voice is a shaky whisper. “Like I’m scaring you.”
“You are scaring me,” he murmurs. “Guess what? I’m still here. I’m right fucking here.”
He reaches for me, but now I’m the one pulling away — out of his grip, off the bench, onto my feet. My eyes are stinging again and suddenly, everything feels a bit out of focus. Like maybe that swirling black hole of grief inside me has pulled me off balance, out of alignment. I’m on a new orbit now, about to crash into something hard enough to do permanent damage.
To me and to him.
Snap out of it, Emilia… before you make an even bigger mess of things.
Cold air washes over my skin. Like waking up from a dream, the past few minutes flash through my mind, sharp-edged details tearing like knives. Horror wells inside me as the haze of lust clears completely from my head. I stagger backward, as far away from him as I can get without leaving the clearing, a hand pressed over my mouth.
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