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“That’s not how the line of succession works.” Annoyance crept into his tone; it gave his already deep voice an inflexible cord that wrapped around her. “How do you not know this?”
The steel thread in his voice snapped her control in half.
“Because my father was forty-seven when the bastards murdered him, and it wasn’t something I thought I’d have to think about for a long fucking time.” She tossed back the akvavit like it really was the water of life its name translated to.
She welcomed the alcohol blaze as it slid down her throat and settled in her belly. It dulled the memories fighting to the surface—the wet, gurgling sounds her father made as he fought for breath, the dark burgundy of the blood gushing from his stomach. The way she didn’t even fight the hand wrapped around her wrist, the one that stopped her from running to his side to comfort him in his last moments. She blamed Elskov for her father’s death, but the guilt for letting him die alone w
as all hers. The silence screamed in her ears, and she concentrated to feel the last tinges of heat from the strong alcohol.
“Your Royal Highness, please forgive me,” Dom said, executing another deep bow. “I shouldn’t have said what I did.”
“I’m not Princess Eloise. It seems she died of a drug overdose.” She flipped the shot glass over and set it next to the decanter. “I’m Elle Olsen.”
He drained the last of his akvavit and placed his glass next to hers. “We both know that’s not true.”
“It doesn’t matter, because America is my home now. You want to play your spy-versus-spy games with the Resistance? Be my guest, but I won’t be part of it.”
“Princess, you don’t have a choice.” There was that unforgiving tone again, the one that allowed no disagreement.
Looked like someone was about to be a very disappointed Mr. Hard Body. She raised her chin and narrowed her eyes at him. “I told you before, I always have a choice.”
Dom closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. When he opened them again, he pinned her to the floor with a look of icy determination.
“Five days from now, the Kronig will take place,” he said. “It can only take place with you in attendance. If you are not there to accept your royal duties, the crown must go to the next person in line for succession. That cannot be Alton, because he is married into the royal family. There is no one else, because the Fjende were thorough in their bloodletting. If you are not at the Kronig, the country will be thrown into chaos and the Fjende would not be guaranteed to have someone they control on the throne. They need you to take your place during the Kronig and marry you off to Alton so you can produce an heir that they can control.”
That sounded perfectly unpleasant. “And after that, what is it? A shiv between the ribs?”
“For the past few years, they’ve let it be known that Princess Eloise is in precarious health—nothing specific, just enough to cover up the impersonator’s increasingly limited appearances. Our theory is that they’ll kill you and blame your long-standing but never named illness.”
The bastards were thorough. She considered a third shot but knew that would knock her on her ass, and she needed to stay focused if she was going to figure out a way out of this shit storm she found herself in. And how exactly had she become embroiled in this? She’d been more than careful. She’d dyed her white-blond hair to the same strawberry blond as her favorite fictional teenage detective. Gone were her dark blue eyes, thanks to brown-colored contacts. She never stood out. She never spoke up. She’d been discovered anyway.
“Why won’t the Fjende get another impersonator?” That would make things so much easier for everyone. They could have their little fiefdom, and she could go on living her quiet life of imposed solitude.
“The timeline is rather tight for that.”
Frustration ballooned inside her, eliminating any space for fear or regrets or so-called royal duty. “So leave Elskov to find its own new leader.”
“That would mean bloody civil war.” He didn’t yell. He didn’t have to; the censure in his voice was enough. “There is no parliament, no legislative branch to take over if the monarchy dies suddenly. Thousands would die. Do you really want their blood on your hands because you didn’t feel like doing your duty and wearing a crown?”
“That crown killed my father,” she yelled in a harsh whisper to not draw undue attention. “That country let it happen. They deserve what they get.”
“You can’t mean that.”
“Why, because it’s my duty to sacrifice everything at the altar of Elskov?”
Blood beat against her eardrums, and heat pulsed in her cheeks as she glowered at Dom. How dare he try to drag her back into all this, back to the country that destroyed everyone she loved.
“No, because it’s what your father expects. He bled for Elskov. Are you really willing to let his sacrifice be in vain?” This time Dom reached for the crystal decanter, poured a second shot, and downed it. “We need you to make a surprise appearance at the Kronig, because the Fjende can’t make a move against you in public. A perfectly timed simultaneous surgical strike by the Resistance will destroy their leadership and cut off the head of the snake. Then you will take your rightful place on the throne.”
“And then I become the Resistance’s puppet?”
“No.” He looked at her straight in the eye. “Then you become queen.”
Queen. The role she’d been raised to assume. After her mother died, her father channeled his grief by telling his five-year-old daughter all about the great queens of Elskov. They’d been warriors, strategists, leaders—everything she was not. She was a stylist with a one-bedroom apartment in a sketchy neighborhood in Harbor City without close friends and who only had one-night stands because relationships were impossible when you were hiding who you really were. The realization of just how far she’d missed the mark her father had set blew through her like a hot wind down the main street of a ghost town, scattering emotional debris and leaving her empty and exhausted.
Dom reached out for her but stopped when his large hands were still inches away from touching her. He fisted his hands and brought them back to his sides. “All I’m asking for right now is that you don’t say no.”
Too weary to continue, she conceded this battle, knowing the war was far from over. “I have a feeling you wouldn’t accept it anyway.”
