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And his body responded in a wild rush of sensation that very nearly made him shake. It took him over. He felt an almost overwhelming lust and longing entwined, holding him so tight, wrenching him, catapulting through him.

It was a wonder he could breathe at all.

He was shocked he didn’t set the sofa they sat upon alight, but Aeryn didn’t seem to notice.

“The art museum here agreed to send out the two pieces of the artist’s work we’d been gifted as part of an estate to complete the collection,” she told him. “This meant that I had to travel to the country in question several times a year to oversee the installation, make certain that the works were being shown to best advantage, and handled in a way that was consistent with our practices.”

“I’ve always liked art,” he said, without thinking, and then realized it was true.

And even if he hadn’t understood that it was true because it felt true inside of him, he would have seen it on her face. She looked almost stricken.

“Yes,” she said, as if that was painful. “You do.”

“So you went to this country to shepherd an art collection,” he said, encouraging her to continue. Because he was certain, somehow, that dwelling on these emotional moments that he could not understand would only make it worse.

“Liandero,” she said, then paused.

And he understood, again, that this was where he was expected to remember. To fill in her blank. To hear that name and feel it connect to something in him. But he didn’t.

So she set her shoulders in something of a straight line, and continued. “It’s a country in the Alps. Between Italy and Liechtenstein. It has a rich history and a ruling family that is renowned in Europe for remaining relatively scandal free.”

That amused him, though he could not have said why. “Relatively?”

“So far,” she said, and there was something else in her tone then. Something harder. “But scandal is inevitable when humans are involved. Sometimes I think the demands of public life itself inherently make scandal inevitable.” She stopped herself and, again, there was that wry expression on her lovely face when she continued. “But I have a lot of opinions on these things and what does it matter? I’m just a single mother living in Chicago, oceans away from the concerns of European royal families.”

“You said that so sardonically that I can only assume you mean the opposite,” V said.

Aeryn looked down at her tea again. Perhaps she was enamored of the sofa cushions themselves. “As I tell this story, I’m realizing that it’s very boring, really. Tragically common.” She looked up. “I fell in love.”

The strangest sensation moved through him then, and it was not a pleasant one. It felt jagged and unwieldy, and it pressed at him. V wondered if it was a response to the physical beating he’d taken outside, and before—whatever that had been—and so it took him a long moment to realize that it was not a broken bone asserting itself or any kind of cardiac catch-up event.

It was jealousy. He didn’t like to think of her in love with anyone. He did not like to think of her emotions directed at some faceless individual he could not analyze himself.

It made his chest feel unpleasantly tight.

“My felicitations,” he made himself say, though the words tasted sour in his mouth.

Her eyes glittered, and that did not make his chest feel any better.

“It’s funny, isn’t it? When a person tells you they fell in love, what do we hear? We think of a book, perhaps. Or a film. We think of safe and tidy emotions, tucked away in a narrative.” Aeryn shook her head, her green eyes still fused to his. “But that’s not the kind of love I’m talking about.”

He wanted to ask her for clarification. Or demand it, more like, if he was interpreting that urge inside him correctly—and making demands did not seem like the right tactic here. But it didn’t matter either way, because his throat had gone tight.

There was no physical reason for that, either, he was sure.

“I’m talking about the kind of love that takes a person out at the knees,” Aeryn told him, in a tone that was not exactly soothing. Not safe nor tidy in the least, and it got worse as she went on. “It was overwhelming. Disfiguring. I’ve thought about it, quite a lot in the years since, and I often ask myself if there’s anything I could have done to prevent it. People say there is, of course. That a person can as easily choose not to love as to love. And maybe that’s true if it’s a tidier sort.” She shook her head, and there was a pressure behind his eyes that he couldn’t name. He only knew it didn’t ease when he rubbed his hand over them. “But this was a catastrophic mess from day one. And both of us were affected. I know that I’m not the only one involved who would have preferred it had never happened at all.”

He could feel his body reacting to things she was saying, or possibly that intense way she was saying them. His pulse was elevated. He could feel the way his heart surged against his ribs. He felt as if he ought to say something, but his chest still felt constricted, it was as if his tongue had forgotten how to form words, and there was still that pressure. Behind his eyes. In his throat.

Deep in his bones.

“For three years,” she told him with that same quiet ferocity, “I saw him whenever I could. It’s surprisingly easy to sneak away from your life, even all the way to Europe, when you want to badly enough. When you feel it’s worth it. It all had to be out of the public eye, so we had stolen moments. Secret getaways. And loving him was truly the easiest thing I’ve ever done in my whole life. He was irresistible. Everything between us was magic.”

“And yet somehow I feel certain you were doomed,” V said, though it felt as if his throat was made of broken glass.

“He was the king,” Aeryn told him, and he could not have described the look on her face then if his life had depended on it. Or why he felt as if it did. “Unlike many kings, his bride had been chosen for him long, long ago. He was betrothed, but not married, and he put the wedding off for most of his life because he didn’t particularly care for the choice that had been made for him.”

She sat a little bit straighter, as if he’d protested when he was sure he hadn’t. “And before you accuse me of being unfair, the king and his betrothed bride had a fundamental difference of opinion when it came to ruling the kingdom. The king wanted what was best for his people. The would-be queen wanted only what was good for herself. Incompatible, really. But betrothals like theirs could not be broken. Not without scandal. Not without consequences.”