“You did,” I say softly. “I’m very proud.”
His glare weakens, and then he kisses my forehead. The tenderness of it nearly drops me.
He keeps his mouth there for a moment, breathing against my skin, one hand on my face and the other at my waist. I let myself lean into him, not fully, because my side still hurts and his body is still trembling faintly from the panic, but enough. Enough to tell him I am here. Enough to let him tell me the same.
“I thought I dreamed you,” he says quietly.
The words break what little composure I had managed to gather.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper again.
He closes his eyes. “I know, My King.”
The title ruins me in a different way. It shouldn’t still. I am not a King anymore, not in any way the world recognizes. Vincenzo Vieri is dead, and whatever crown he wore is buried under false evidence, burned records, and half an empire handed away. But when Nikolaj says it, the word has nothing to do with power. It meansmine, beloved, impossible man, the one I lost, the one I kept, the one who survived long enough to come home.
“I’m not a King anymore,” I say, but weakly, because we both know it isn’t true.
His eyes open, dark and fierce in the moonlight. “You’ll always be My King. Even if you’re unemployed now.”
“Unemployed?” I ask, deeply scandalized.
“You died dramatically and moved to my island. That’s not a profession.”
“I have skills.”
“You have trauma and expensive taste.”
“I also have excellent diplomatic instincts.”
“You used those to fake your death.”
“And it worked.”
His eyes narrow. “Careful.”
The warning has no real heat, but I hear the pain beneath it and sober immediately. “I’m sorry.”
His hand tightens at my waist. “Don’t shrink. I’m angry, not leaving.”
I absorb that slowly.
Angry, not leaving.
Perhaps that is what we are now. Not healed. Not untouched. Not magically made whole because I returned and he held me. Just two men learning the difference between anger and abandonment, guilt and punishment, silence and absence.
I smile despite myself, and this time it stays for more than a second.
Then he pulls me back into his arms—not gently or carefully enough. The sudden pressure sends pain through my side, sharp and hot, and I gasp before I can hide it. He hears it immediately and loosens his hold with a curse.
“Shit,” he says, pulling back. “I hurt you.”
“You didn’t hurt me.” I catch his wrist before he can move farther away. “My body is still being dramatic.”
His glare is immediate and familiar enough to make something in me soften despite the tears. “Your body was blown up, shot, burned, and stitched back together. It gets to be dramatic.”
“Only you would make that sound like a legal defense.”
“It is. I’m an excellent advocate when you stop being a stubborn Italian bastard long enough to listen.”
