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Zale took the phone, turning it over in his hand. The infamous phone. The source of so much tension.
Silent, gut hard, chest tight, Zale flipped the phone open to scroll through her in-box. Text from Emmeline.
Text from Emmeline.
Text from Emmeline.
His chest squeezed tighter. He drew a rough, unsteady breath as Krek quietly left. For a moment Zale wanted to hurl the phone across the room but instead he sat down in the nearest chair to read the messages. He went back to the very beginning and read them all, incoming as well as outgoing since he had time, because Emmeline, or Hannah, or whoever she said she was, wouldn’t be going anywhere. The palace gates were always locked, and no one came or went without Zale’s knowledge and permission.
Just as Krek said, Hannah had packed a suitcase, and changed into traveling clothes, but she couldn’t get out of the palace. The gates were locked. The palace guard stood at attention. They refused to even make eye contact with her. She tried to persuade one guard and then another to open the gates but each one stared straight ahead as if she wasn’t even there.
Hannah gave up pleading and sat down on the palace’s front steps. It was a clear night, a cool night, and she was growing cold but she’d rather freeze to death on the steps than go back inside.
She was beginning to think she’d freeze to death, too, when Zale’s very deep voice spoke on the top step behind her. “Hannah Smith, you have some explaining to do.”
Her stomach plummeted. Goose bumps covered her arms. Slowly she rose knowing that this next conversation with Zale would be horrendous.
She was right. He grilled her for hours, repeating the same questions over and over. It was three-thirty in the morning now and Zale was growing angrier by the minute.
“It’s illegal what you’ve done,” he said harshly after she finally fell silent, worn-out from talking, exhausted from trying to make him understand. “You’ve broken too many laws to count. You didn’t just impersonate Princess Emmeline, you committed fraud as we well as perjury.”
She stared at him dry-eyed, her body trembling from fatigue. “I am sorry.”
“Not good enough.”
“How can I make amends? I want to make amends.”
“You can’t,” he answered brusquely. “And the more I think about it, the more certain I am that I should have you arrested. Locked up. Let you sit in jail for a couple of years—”
“Zale.”
But he couldn’t be placated. “What sort of person are you? Who does what you did?”
“I was never supposed to come here. I’d never agreed to come—”
“But you did.”
Hannah’s shoulders twisted helplessly. “I kept thinking that any moment Emmeline would show up. Any moment she’d return and we’d switch places again and that would be that.”
“What you did was a crime! It’s a serious offense to enter the country under false pretenses, use a fake identity, interfere with state business. Any one of those would earn you a stiff prison sentence, but all three together?” He shook his head. “How could you do it?”
“I don’t know.” Hannah felt horrible, beyond horrible. “And there isn’t a good excuse. I was stupid. Beyond stupid. And I knew I was in trouble once I got here but I didn’t know how to put a stop to it. I liked you immediately. Fell for you hard—”
“Please don’t go there.”
“It’s true. I fell for you at first sight. And I knew you weren’t mine. I knew you belonged to Emmeline but she wouldn’t come, and yet she wouldn’t let me leave.”
“So you decided to just stay and play princess, thinking no one would ever find out the truth?”
She bit her lip, unable to defend herself. Because yes, that’s what she’d naively hoped.
Stupid, stupid, Hannah.
The silence hung between them, tense, agonizing, and then Zale turned away, making a rough sound in his throat. “To think I nearly fell in love with you. A fake. An impostor! My God, I even took you to my bed—”
“You can’t blame me for that. You wanted to sleep with me, too!”
“Yes, because I thought you were mine. I thought you were to be my wife. I had no idea you were an American girl getting her thrills pretending to be my fiancée.”
“It wasn’t like that. I didn’t want to betray you or Emmeline—”
“But you did, and you did come to my bed, and you enjoyed it.” He went to her, tangled his hand in her hair and forced her face up to his. “Didn’t you?”
Her jaw tightened and she stared up at him in mute fury. Zale saw the blaze of anger in her eyes and he welcomed it. Good, let her be angry. Let her hurt. Let her feel a tenth of his pain and shame.
