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V considered her for a moment. There was still that tight grip on his chest. As if his ribs were reacting to what she was telling him of their own accord.

“So you left him, then,” he said. “Because he would not end his betrothal.”

He watched a look of something like pain move over her face. “I wish that I could tell you that I did exactly that, but I didn’t. And it is my enduring shame that I wouldn’t have left him, most likely. I wish I could claim otherwise.” Aeryn took a ragged sort of breath. “His wedding date had been set, and so the clock was ticking. And I was distraught, don’t get me wrong, but I loved him too much. I’d like to tell you—and myself—that I would never have become a married man’s mistress, but for him?” She shook her head. “There was no way I would not have ruined myself for that man. There was no way I would not betray myself if it meant holding on to him. Having him was all I cared about, even if I could only have the tiniest sliver of him.” She made a face as she could hardly imagine that now. “But then I got pregnant.”

V found himself riveted. Though, again, it was as if everything inside of him was broken glass and that crushing grip, tightening with every breath.

“That pregnancy saved my life,” Aeryn said softly, her eyes too green as they held his. “Because it gave me clarity. There were things that I was willing to do, situations that I was prepared to accept, but when I thought about subjecting an innocent child to those things…” She let out a low sort of laugh, steeped in bitterness. “Only then could I see them for what they were.”

“And what were they?” He could not have said why his voice was so low. Why he scarcely made a sound.

“Obscene,” she shot back. “We had always been honest, the king and I. Brutally so, in fact. I did not lie to him about my feelings before I was pregnant, so I saw no reason to start then. I knew he would not choose me. That he felt he could not choose for himself, much less me. But I will confess, I did hope that somehow, he would find a way to choose his own child.” Her chest moved as if her breathing was as ragged as his. “But he did not.”

V made a low noise. “He sounds like a dick.”

Aeryn laughed, and it sounded brighter that time. More surprised, perhaps.

“I signed a thousand papers,” she said. “Mostly having to do with lines of succession and claims against the crown. It turns out that when thrones are involved, everyone is very concerned about who might come for them, as if I was a battalion instead of an art history major. I signed nondisclosure agreements. So many nondisclosure agreements, that sometimes I worry that if I think about him, or accidentally see his picture somewhere, they will take action against me for it.”

“And yet you are telling me all of this quite easily,” V pointed out.

She nodded as if that was only then occurring to her, too.

“It’s Christmas Eve. There’s a blizzard outside and you don’t know who you are. I like my chances.” She blew out a breath. “Even then, we did not end. It wasn’t until the start of my second trimester that it really hit me. He wasn’t going to choose me. More importantly, he wasn’t going to choose the baby.” Her head tilted slightly to one side as she regarded him. “He would tell you that he couldn’t. That the very notion he could have a bastard child with some American commoner was so beneath him it would stain the throne of Liandero itself.”

“Tell me he did not say these things.”

“He didn’t have to say them,” Aeryn retorted, her eyes far too bright and green. “That was the reality. I don’t know why it took me so long to see it. But when I did, suddenly, this bubble that we’d been in for all of those years, the bubble that had made me believe that love could solve anything, popped. And all I could see was the ugly reality, at last. He was going to marry the woman he’d been betrothed to for the entire time I’d known him. She would have to produce his heirs to maintain the royal line of succession. So there he’d be, the king and the family man, dutifully presenting the crown with the next generation, while I sat… Where? In the shadows? In the sidelines? Waiting for crumbs and telling my child that was a life? I might have humiliated myself like that.” She laughed again, though it had gone back into bitterness again. “I would have, I fear. I wouldn’t have been able to pull myself away. But I had a child to consider. A daughter I hadn’t met yet. How could I possibly look at her when she was born and condemn her to a life like that?”

His heart was pounding so hard then it actually hurt. “You could not.”

His voice brooked no argument.

“I could not,” she agreed. “I did not. When I left him that time, I had no intention of returning. And I did not return. I blocked his number. I blocked every number that I thought might lead to him. I did not tell him when I bought this house. I did not tell him when my daughter was born, because he knows how to count.”

She paused, possibly to breathe. He could see the pulse in her neck, wild and fast. “He had already told me once that he could not imagine any way that he could come and visit an infant without there being talk and why. I might not have liked that but I agreed, and so I…built a life instead. I did not want his money—” and she shot a look at him that felt like a slap, yet all he could seem to do was blink “—but decided that the very least the man could do was give my daughter a beautiful life. His name is not on her birth certificate, and when she is old enough, I will tell her that her father is dead. Because for all intents and purposes, he is.”

Aeryn swallowed, hard. Her voice was raw when she continued. “And that’s my story, V.”

“And what about you?” he dared to ask, though it seemed to him that the room was heavy with the story she’d told. That even the light fixture up high was swaying with the force of it. “Do you have a beautiful life?”

“I like my life,” she said, which was not the same thing. “It suits me.”

But his heart rate did not subside. She was looking at him in a particular way that got to him. Like a knife wedged deep in his ribs.

V thought about everything she had told him. About nondisclosure agreements and kings in a foreign country who would support a child, but never acknowledge it.

He thought about the things she’d said when she’d opened the front door and let him in, that had made no sense to him. That had seemed to crash all around him like more white noise, no matter how certain he was that he’d come to the right place.

That she was the right person.

He lifted one of his hands to his face and pressed it to one of his temples, where the throb there was fast becoming pain. He had a headache. There had been a crash. The only thing he had wanted or needed to do when he was out in that storm was get here.

Here, where he did not believe he had ever been before. To her. And she was certainly no stranger to him, no matter how little he knew her.

He still remembered her face. He was sure he’d touched her body, everywhere.

V cleared his throat. “It’s me, isn’t it,” he said, though everything in him revolted against the very idea that he could do…any of the things she’d told him he had. “I’m the dick king.”