Page 42 of Dragon King’s Duty Bride

The prickle sharpened.

“Musician?”

“He used to play when Sia painted. He never came to the house and they never dated. They just enjoyed their art together.” She tripped over her words trying to get them all out.

“Painted?” Lucas blinked. “Sia doesn’t paint,” he said, certain of it.

“Maybe not now.” Her mother’s lips pressed together. “But she used to.”

The quiet that followed unsettled him more than any accusation would have.

“She has a whole room for all her stuff out in the garage, but her paintings are in here.” Celeste grabbed his arm. “Come see her art, Papa. It’s beautiful.”

She led him inside to a room at the end of the hall. He could smell Sia as soon as he entered. Paintings covered every inch of the walls, beautiful oil paintings of trees and flowers, all with the mountains in the background.

“She painted these?”

The girls nodded. “She wanted to be an art gallery when she was little,” Stella informed him.

Celeste rolled her eyes. “An artist, silly. She wanted to be an artist with her paintings in an art gallery.”

Luna pointed to one in particular. “Can we take that back to the castle, Papa? I love that one.”

Lucas felt gutted. His mind spun through memories to see if he had ever known Sia painted. Maybe Dian had said something at some point, but nothing came to mind.

“Where is her painting spot? How is she there? I thought she was injured.”

Her mother sighed. “You know how stubborn she is. As soon as she was given a walking boot and a cane, she was off again.”

And yet she couldn’t come home to him. The fact didn’t get lost in his mind.

“Show me where she is,” he said. He needed to make this oversight right.

The girls pointed out the trail, but their grandmother held them back when he headed out. The path into the woods was uneven, and Lucas noticed how isolated it felt the deeper he went, and how easily someone could disappear into this kind of quiet.

He had never been a huge outdoors person, but even he could appreciate the beauty of the woods as he walked. It was like he was the only person for a thousand miles.

He heard the music before he saw them.

A flute.

The melody wound between the trees, soft and intimate, rising and dipping like breath. Lucas slowed his steps without meaning to and came up on the clearing.

Then he saw them.

Sia sat on a low wooden stool in the clearing, mountains visible beyond the treeline in the distance. A canvas rested against her knees, her hand moving with steady focus. There was a streak of green paint along her cheek. Her injured leg was stretched slightly in front of her, the boot propped up on a stump.

She was smiling. Not the polite, measured smile she wore at formal dinners or social gatherings. Not the careful one she offered him across long tables.

This smile was unguarded.

Her eyes were closed as she swayed to the melody. Opposite her stood a man, tall, lean, with his hair blowing in the breeze as he held his flute. His gaze was fixed on Sia with an intensity that made Lucas’s vision narrow.

The way he looked at her was not casual or even respectful, in his opinion. It was hunger, though he tried to disguise it as admiration.

Jealousy hit Lucas with startling force. It was not a feeling he was accustomed to. He did not compete for anything. He selected what he wanted.

Yet here, beneath the trees and the silent watch of the mountains, he felt displaced. Sia had never painted in his presence, nor had he ever seen her look so… alive.