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‘Then find someone else to run interference, Aleksander.’ She got up and, absolutely incensed, he slammed his palm down on the table, making her jump, but she did not give him the satisfaction of turning to face him.
‘You do not know what you’re asking, Henna. If you did, you wouldn’t—’ He bit his tongue before he could say another word.
Staring at the table, he heard her say, ‘I know that, whatever it is, it’s eating you up inside and making you reckless. And you can’taffordto be reckless, Aleksander. You’re playing Russian roulette with your meetings and your schedule and you’re manipulating people into outcomes that you think you can control, but you can’t.’
It was a warning that he didn’t want to hear but couldn’t deny. He got up from the table and paced across the room, feeling as if he were in a cage. Henna was right, he knew that. But so was he. She really didn’t know what she was asking of him. His fingertips tingled and he released the fists he’d formed, restoring circulation.
He hadn’t told anyone what had happened to him at seventeen. He wasn’t sure he even had the words. It was twelve years ago, and he could swear it hurt as badly as if it had been yesterday. He felt it like the fresh hell that it always was, a knife twisting in a gut full of grief and loss and guilt.
He could walk out of here now and not look back. He’d find a way to go to Öström; he wasn’t a complete imbecile. But her accusation had hit home, cutting closer to the truth than she’d probably realised. He needed to face it.
‘My world used to be a happy one,’ he started slowly, his words stilted. ‘Charmed, even. I was the Prince of a beautiful and wealthy, thriving kingdom, school was easy for me, the lessons nothing in comparison to the studies my father would have me learn in preparation to becoming King. Despite my status, I had friends—good, funny, naughty, silly—every single thing I could ask for. And Kristine. She was...’
‘Lovely,’ Henna filled in. Kristine had been quiet but always nice. She certainly hadn’t been like Viveca and her friends, whose vicious tongue-lashings had sometimes bordered on bullying. There had been something about Kristine that remained apart from it all but anchored to Aleksander. They had always been hand in hand, despite the school rule about remaining eleven inches apart.
‘You remember her?’ he asked and for a moment she thought he sounded surprised.
She nodded rather than answering because of course she remembered the girl who’d put an end to Henna’s childhood crush on the boy who had found her in the maze and given her a best friend. She had seen their relationship and known that it was special.
‘We’d been together for three years. I think, outside of the time she spent with me, she hated every minute of being with a prince. She was naturally shy,’ he said, pausing his back-and-forth march across the small breadth of her living area. ‘And I didn’t take that seriously enough.’ The halting nature of his words made it seem as if he were talking about this for the first time in a very long time. Thinking about it in a way that, perhaps, he hadn’t done before. ‘I should have,’ he sighed. ‘I should have taken it so much more seriously.’
He sat on the edge of her bed, leaning his elbows on his thighs and staring at his hands. He had never looked less like a king to her. And suddenly she wanted to take the question back. A pit opened in her stomach, warning her that she didn’t want to know, that she should never have asked.
‘It didn’t matter that we were careful...’ Henna’s hand flew to her lips. ‘Kristine fell pregnant just at the end of the summer term.’
Henna’s thoughts scattered, going through every single possibility in a broken heartbeat, knowing there was no possible good ending to this story.
‘I told her that I wanted to marry her. I had thought about it and wanted to tell my parents, I wanted to have our baby. I...had never wanted anything more in my life,’ he said, looking up at Henna so that she could read the truth in his gaze. The truth and the devastation...
Breath shaking his words, he pressed on. ‘I asked her to wait for me and she said she would. She promised. I needed to figure out how to tell my parents but, before I could, I heard that her family had literally packed up overnight and moved halfway across Svardia. I...’ he shook his head, as if he still couldn’t understand it ‘...I managed to convince one of the security guards to take me to them and when I got there...it was done.’
A knife slashed through her heart for him. She didn’t need to ask what had been done.
‘She cried so damn much. Tears falling the whole time, she tried to explain why she couldn’t have married me, why she couldn’t have borne to be in the public spotlight, how young we both were, that neither of us were ready. This way, she said, no one needed to know, as if it hadn’t even happened.
‘Do you know how hard it is to look into the eyes of someone you love and for them to say that your child never happened? To not have a choice about it? And worse...to know that you failed to protect either of them from what happened...because of who you were?’
Henna watched as Aleksander blinked back tears.
‘No one needed to know,’ he repeated. ‘So for a long while I didn’t tell anyone. I kept it all deep, deep down.’
Her heart ached. That this terrible tragedy had happened to him and he had no support, no love or compassion to comfort him. At seventeen, to be dealing with so, so much. Grief, love, loss, guilt. She couldn’t even imagine.
‘Eventually my father called me into his office and told me...to stopmoping.’
The gasp that fell from Henna’s lips sounded an awful lot like horror to Aleksander, but it didn’t quite penetrate the thick icy fog of the past winding itself around him until it froze his fingers and stung his chest.
‘He knew,’ she stated, and Aleksander could only nod as he heard his father all those years ago.
‘It is my job to know everything that happens in my country. And it is my job to ensure that mistakes do not derail this country. A job that will be yours one day.’
‘He didn’t...’ Henna couldn’t finish the question, but she didn’t have to. He understood what she wanted to know.
‘My father said that when he visited Kristine’s family they were already decided on...a course of action.’ The words hurt his heart as he said them, as he described the end of a life that would never be. For so long, anger and grief had lashed his soul, and beneath all that...responsibility.Hisresponsibility.
A hand pressed against his forearm, the skin-to-skin contact a shock. Henna was kneeling before him, the sympathy in her gaze, the compassion...it was wasted on him.
‘So,’ he said, clearing his throat and gently shaking her off as he rose to stand. ‘Now you know. And now you will come to Öström.’ It wasn’t a question. He had paid the price she had exacted and she would do as he demanded. ‘And we will never speak of this again.’
