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Aeryn looked at him, her eyes too bright with emotion. Then slowly, almost as if it hurt, she inclined her head.

“You are His Majesty, King Vesuvius of Liandero,” she told him, her voice raw and sad, bitter and broken at once. And also, he thought, very, very angry. “And as far as I’m aware, today is your wedding day.”

Chapter Three

Vesuvius looked almost ghostly then. As if he thought he might have a foot in the grave—and perhaps he did, since she doubted he had ever been forced to consider himself in such an unflattering light before. Or any unflattering light at all, for that matter.

But even as she thought that, Aeryn knew that it wasn’t quite fair. She’d known who he was. From the very first moment. There had been no subterfuge, no pretense.

He had never pretended to be anything or anyone but who he was.

No matter how many self-indulgent side trips she took into self-pity, she always came back to that single truth.

Not only that, she could have walked away at any time. For all his wealth and power, the truth was that Vesuvius had far less leeway than she did. He had to account for his whereabouts constantly. His life had been decided for him in advance.

He couldn’t fly to Chicago on a whim to spend a weekend holed up somewhere. There would be diplomatic implications. The press would be all over him. He would have to offer explanations.

By contrast, no one cared what Aeryn did. No one was following her around. The museum was a lovely place to work, she had always been given a great deal of leeway, and as long as she did her job, no one paid too much attention to when she arrived or left or how long she took for lunch—all things that she knew made other jobs less pleasant. Her colleagues might have tutted a bit about her love affair with all things European—because when it wasn’t time for her prearranged visits to Liandero, she made it seem that she simply leaped onto planes and wandered about Europe at will—but she didn’t mind. They weren’t wrong, really.

She could have stopped doing all that at any time, but she hadn’t.

As she’d told him, she knew that she wouldn’t have stopped.

And so the shame she had to live with was how close she’d been to carrying on with a married man.

She had always managed to excuse away the betrothed part. Mostly because she’d known that Vesuvius didn’t care for his betrothed bride at all, a sentiment that the dreaded Sintia had returned in kind.

She had always told herself that what mattered was that she’d stayed on the right side of the line.

But tonight, telling him that story, she knew better. She wasn’t sure that any force in this world aside from her daughter could have kept her away from him.

It was humbling to realize that even now, nothing had changed.

She had let him in, hadn’t she. The smart move would have been to slam the door in his face and assume that his security detail would take care of things. The way they always had.

Though she frowned as she thought about that. “How on earth are you here by yourself?” she asked. “Where’s the royal guard?” When he only looked blank, she shook her head. “You never go anywhere without your security. This is very strange. I don’t understand how anyone would let you hurt yourself and then wander around a strange, foreign city alone.”

“There are a great many things I do not understand,” he said, in that low, rich voice of his that she’d tried so hard to forget. “But I’m afraid I…”

And as she watched, he went truly pale. Aeryn was moving before she thought better of it, or second-guessed what she was doing. She thrust her mug down onto the coffee table while simultaneously throwing herself down the length of the couch to catch him before he toppled over.

For a moment she thought he’d passed out, but he blinked up at her. “I appear to be weak,” he said.

With such affront that it nearly made her burst into tears. Because it was so him.

It was perfectly him, and this night was already so strange, and worse than that, she was holding him. His head was on her shoulder now and she didn’t need to be this close to him again. It didn’t do anything good for her, her nervous system, or her good intentions.

She reminded herself, sternly, that the man was hurt.

Aeryn made herself move, then got him to lie down lengthwise. Once he did, she knelt down in the narrow space between the coffee table and the couch and took a closer look at that head wound of his.

“I’m not entirely certain you don’t have a concussion,” she said after a moment of looking at that gash. It wasn’t pretty, but it wasn’t as bloody as it must have been earlier, out in the storm. She didn’t like to think about what could have happened to him, out in a bad snowstorm with a head wound. “And if I’m honest? I think you should probably go to the hospital.” But she was making a face as she said that. “But the weather is not supposed to get better anytime soon. And even if we could get there safely, I’m not entirely sure that it wouldn’t cause an international incident if I showed up at Northwestern Memorial’s ER with the King of Liandero in tow.”

“I am fine,” Vesuvius said, a little bit testily. Which, again, was so him. She’d never seen him admit that he was the slightest bit weak unless and until he had to. Maybe not even then. “I think I just need to close my eyes for a minute.”

“That’s fine,” she said. “You can sleep, but I’ll be waking you up. Every hour, on the hour. Isn’t that what you do with head injuries?”

“How marvelous,” he muttered, though he didn’t open his eyes again. “I can’t wait.”