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Aeryn hurried into the kitchen, not sure if she was relieved or annoyed that he’d been interrupted. She wasn’t surprised when he trailed after her, then looked around at the remodeled kitchen as if he’d never seen one before. It had been modernized in many respects, with glass doors that looked out over the small backyard. It also led to her greenhouse, where she grew all the plants she liked all year round and could settle in to read books even in the dead of winter. She considered it part of the medicine she used to fend off these dark Chicago winters, but then, she’d never imagined having to justify her lifestyle choices to Vesuvius, of all people.

A feeling that intensified as she watched his gaze move to the restored brick, the gleaming range, the graceful sway of the pots above the kitchen island.

She couldn’t decide if she felt embarrassed that she’d used his generosity at all, or if she was worried that he thought she was too extravagant, or if she was furious that he was here at all, looking at his handiwork.

Aeryn decided it was all three. Then she poured them both steaming mugs of tea, and set them on the counter. Perhaps with slightly more force than necessary.

“It’s a mint tea,” she told him, in case he couldn’t smell that for himself. “Very soothing. You can drink yours and then, I’m hoping, go back to whatever it is you were doing before you came here.”

She supposed she could call an embassy, or something. Alert his kingdom that he was on the loose in Chicago, because surely that had to be an error. She was certain she would have heard if a whole king was on the loose in Chicagoland. It seemed like the sort of thing that would merit a mention on the nightly news or some gossip at the museum, at the very least.

Vesuvius moved closer to the counter and then stood opposite her. And she watched as those aristocratic hands of his, always harder than expected but no less elegant, wrapped slowly around the mug of tea she’d prepared.

He was such an outrageously beautiful man, she had explored every inch of his body, and she knew him more intimately than she knew herself, in some way.

She had accepted some time ago that she was never going to get over that.

Not that it mattered.

Because the other pertinent fact about King Vesuvius of Liandero was that he was betrothed. He had been betrothed since he was a child, possibly since birth. And it did not matter that his betrothed future queen was by all accounts a hateful woman. Aeryn had always found her so herself, but then again, she understood that she was not impartial.

Sintia had always viewed her ascension to queen as a business move. Just as Sintia had always viewed herself as the consummate businesswoman. She did not like or care about Vesuvius at all, something she made perfectly clear. Her focus, always, was on how she could enrich herself, center herself, and retain the spotlight at all times.

To say that she and Vesuvius were ill suited for one another was to vastly understate the situation, but again. Aeryn was hardly impartial.

None of that mattered at all, she reminded herself. Because Vesuvius had chosen his ambitious betrothed bride. He had chosen the duty that had been laid out for him when he was a child. He had chosen, there had been no possibility of change in his mind, and she had accepted that choice.

She might not have accepted it gracefully, but she’d accepted all the same.

And him standing here in her kitchen churned all of that up again. She told herself she resented that, plain and simple.

She blew out a breath. “It’s Christmas Eve. I don’t know why you’re here, but you can’t stay. If you have something to say, you should say it. And then go.”

It seemed to take him a long while to lift that hazel gaze of his from his mug to her. And she was sure she’d never seen that particular expression on his face before. Again, it was almost…beset.

Baffled, perhaps.

“I was in the snow,” he told her. “That’s all I remember. That and I knew I had to get here. To this address. And I recognize you.”

Now that gaze was something far more…arresting.

She could feel it everywhere.

Her heart was beating harder and faster in her chest, and surely there were words on her tongue, but she couldn’t seem to find them. He kept looking at her in that same intense, almost too intense way.

“But I find that I cannot remember your name or who you are to me,” he told her, with a certain matter-of-factness that was supremely Vesuvius.

And also made everything inside of her seem to pull tight. Particularly when she saw a glimpse of that self-deprecating curve to his mouth that she’d used to know so well. That some part of her still wanted to kiss, as if she had never been hurt.

But he wasn’t finished. “I hope you will not be too offended,” he said, and that curve of his mouth deepened, “because as it happens, I also cannot remember myself. Not my name. Not what I’m doing here. Not a single thing to explain the fully grown man I saw in your mirror, who, as far as I’m aware, has only existed in the snow outside tonight.”

Chapter Two

Nothing made sense, so he clung to what he had before him.

Her eyes, a shattering sort of emerald, set in that marvelous face of hers. He’d had it in his head while he’d fought his way through the snow and the cold. Her hair, silken and dark, swirling around her slender shoulders. Her smile—though he hadn’t seen her smile tonight.

That meant he remembered her. He recognized her from…somewhere else. Somewhere before.