Page 60 of Throne Off Course

Alexander took a step toward her. “Emilia—”

“No.” She held up a hand, cutting him off. “This—this can’t happen.”

“Why not?” His voice was rough, challenging.

“Why not?” She let out a harsh laugh. “I saw what happened at Sebastian’s party. I’m not blind, Alexander.”

His brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?”

“The whispers, the people watching us.” She crossed her arms, a defensive shield. “If we weren’t at Sebastian’s it would have been a tabloid scandal.”

“And now here we are,” she continued, her voice quieter but no less intense. “You kiss the commoner, get her all twisted up, and then what? Go back to your palace and your arranged marriage while I—” She let out a harsh laugh, shaking her head. “While I what, exactly? Become the footnote in your royal biography? ‘The Crown Prince’s scandalous fling before duty called’?”

Alexander’s jaw clenched. “That’s not—”

“Not what?” Her voice cracked. “Not what you meant? Not whatthis is? Then what is it, Alexander?”

Silence.

And then—

“I’m not trying to lead you on. I don’t want the palace and the arranged marriage.” His voice dropped, stripped of all pretense. “You challenge everything I thought I knew. When you argue with me, when you push back—it wakes something in me I didn’t know was there.”

He took another step toward her, his voice rough with emotion. “I can’t stop thinking about you. When I’m away from you, I count the minutes until I can see you again. When I’m with you, everything else—the Crown, my responsibilities, my mother’s plans—they all fade away.”

He hesitated, then added softly, “You make me feel alive, Emilia. For the first time in my life, I’m not just going through the motions. I want you. Only you.”

The words hit her like a physical blow. A chill ran through her, hope and dread colliding in her chest.

“You can’t,” she whispered, pressing a hand to her forehead, something fragile cracking inside her. “That’s not fair.”

She looked up at him, her eyes glistening. “Do you think I don’t feel it too? That electricity when we’re in the same room? The way time seems to stop when you look at me?”

Her voice trembled. “I feel it all, Alexander. And it terrifies me.”

“Why?” he asked, moving toward her, hope kindling in his eyes.

She gave a sad laugh. “Because we both know how this ends.” She gestured between them. “Tell me, in all those royal archives we’ve been studying, which king or queen actually got a happy ending with a commoner? Which royal chose love over duty and didn’t lose everything?”

The silence that followed was deafening.

“That’s what I thought,” she said softly. “You’re only going to break my heart.”

The words hung between them, raw and undeniable. A truth neither could escape.

And for the first time since she’d met him, he wasn’t playing a role. He wasn’t calculating his next move. The careful mask of the Crown Prince had fallen away completely.

He was just him. Vulnerable. Real.

“And what if we wrote our own ending?” he asked, a desperate edge to his voice.

That was so much worse, because now she could see exactly what she stood to lose—not just her heart, but the possibility of something beautiful and impossible and fragile.

She closed her eyes briefly, trying to gather her thoughts. “Thomas knows.”

Alexander nodded slowly. “Yes.”

“And today he helped us. But what about tomorrow? Or the next day?” She looked at him directly. “How many people can we trust to keep this secret? How long before someone decides their loyalty to the Crown outweighs their loyalty to you?”