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‘You expect me to inhale all this knowledge in five hours? From a pile of books?’ she said.
‘Well, I hear you’re very smart and I did choose the books rather carefully,’ he offered, deadpan. ‘It’s a start. I’m arming you with the tools you’ll need to navigate my world. Knowledge that will prevent you from becoming a pawn for the ruthless. I want you to think for yourself. I need you to be able to protect yourself and our daughter. I will never deny you knowledge or a voice.’
She looked at him, and there was something wholly vulnerable in her gaze. A tiny break in her defences against him. ‘Is this who you really are? No pretence?’
‘This is me.’ His world and his choices exposed. Sometimes self-serving, sometimes in service to the crown, sometimes in need of an anchor he didn’t have but, heaven help him, he tried to be a fair and just man. And if he could be that for strangers he could sure as hell try to be that for her.
‘Okay,’ she said quietly.
‘Okay,’ he echoed, and fled before the sudden sizzling tension in the air between them got too much for him.
CHAPTER THREE
FIVE HOURS AND fifty-eight minutes later, after the flight in the royal jet followed by a helicopter ride, Ana stepped into another world.
Casimir had brought them to a pale stone fortress that shimmered in the moonlight. Floodlights lit the cobblestone courtyard that doubled as the landing pad. The walls of the fortress stretched towards the sky and dark mountains loomed menacingly to either side of it.
Ana couldn’t imagine a more remote place.
‘They’re expecting you,’ he said, as a security guard lifted his sleepy daughter from the helicopter and placed her in Ana’s arms. ‘The south wing is yours for the duration of your stay; they were my mother’s rooms and the rooms I used throughout my childhood.’ He gestured for a tall, bearded man waiting at the edge of the cobblestones to come forward. ‘This is Silas. He’ll see to your needs. I’m afraid I have to return to the capital this evening.’
‘You’re leaving?’ If she sounded panicked it was only because she was. He’d stayed in his office for the entire plane flight and had said less than two words to them in the helicopter. Granted, the helicopter was a noisy beast, not conducive to conversation, but still…
‘It can’t be helped.’
‘Why are you leaving? Where are you going?’ Ana clutched Sophia closer. ‘Why go to all this trouble to bring us here if you’re not even going to be here?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he offered. ‘I’ll return as soon as I can.’
‘You can’t just leave us here! I don’t even know where here is!’
That’d teach her to take the word of a prince as something worth having.
‘You’re at the winter fortress in the Belarine Mountains of Byzenmaach. This is my home and the people here are loyal to me. You can trust them.’
‘Why on earth would I trust them when I can’t even trust you?’
He looked torn in that moment. Not to mention utterly weary.
He took her aside, his hand at the small of her back guiding her way, and it was a gesture she’d never forgotten, not to mention a response she’d never experienced with any other man. Desire washed over her, pure and fierce and more potent than ever. Desire laced with fear.
She closed her eyes and drew in a shaky breath. ‘I want to trust you to do right by us. I want to believe I’ve done the right thing by coming here. But I don’t know you. I never did. All I know is that you come into my world and turn it upside down and I lose.’
He pressed his lips to her temple and then hesitated before lifting her chin and pressing a kiss to the edge of her lips. His lips were soft and warm and so gentle, and if Ana’s eyes fluttered closed and she suddenly wanted this moment to last for ever it was only because all else seemed so harsh.
‘I don’t want to lose any more,’ she whispered, and he pulled away and drew a breath more ragged than hers.
‘Neither do I. Believe me, neither do I.’ Slowly, almost reluctantly, he tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. She leaned into his touch, and maybe it was because he was the one familiar thing in a world that was cold and dark, and maybe her soul would always cry out for his touch no matter what.
