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When the plane drew to a stop on the private runway in the palace grounds she released the safety belt, stood and smoothed out the crinkles in her trousers and swallowed a sad laugh before it got to her lips. The wrinkles were hardly going to be a surprise to anyone. She steeled herself. It would take time to overcome her reputation as the most disastrous princess in Europe. But she would.
She took a moment as Lykos talked to the crew unfolding the stairs onto Svardian soil. This was it. When she put her foot onto palace grounds it would be done. The decision irrevocable. She would be going straight to the office of her brother, the King. A timeline for the press announcement about Freya giving up her title and Marit becoming second in the line of succession to the throne would be decided. And if she knew her brother at all he would want her engaged to someone appropriate by the time the announcement was made.
Someone appropriate.
The phrase burned her throat as if the words dripped acid on her soul. Lykos was so much more thanappropriateand she hated that she had made him feel less than that. But this was the moment she had to make peace with it. She would take the love she had for him, the love she had felt from him and make that enough. She breathed in deeply, hearing the tremble and mewl of therebetikomusic from the Greek tavern crying for her and Lykos and ached for a future she was actively choosing to walk away from.
Finally, this time when she felt his gaze on hers, she met it head-on, nodding once determinedly in that way she had borrowed from him. Her heart turned viciously as she walked up the narrow plane aisle and she passed him to take the steps down onto the tarmac to return to the palace.
Lykos waited in the corridor outside Aleksander’s office, as far from Marit as he could be. She had slowly been distancing herself from him since they’d returned the yacht and boarded the plane. He’d felt it deep down and hated every second of it. But he wouldn’t dishonour her or himself by asking her again. She’d told him that first day, when they were in Milan.
I will always go back.
She’d never once lied to him. But why did it feel so very much as if they were lying to themselves?
He cast a gaze at the garish baroque style that filled the entire Rilderdal Palace, everything in him revolting at the symbols of money, snobbery, emotional neglect and manipulation that it had all come to mean to him since knowing Marit.
PrincessMarit.
He shook his head. The last person he’d thought he’d ever fall for. There she was on the other side of a hallway, less than two metres away, but as far from his reach as the moon. He clenched his jaw, straining at the reins that held him back: his promise to her to respect her decision. A door behind them creaked open and a small, plain-faced brunette caught Marit’s eye with a sympathetic smile.
‘Henna,’ Marit said, meeting the woman with a warm embrace. ‘Have you heard from Freya?’ she asked, pulling back. ‘I’ve been trying to reach her.’
‘She’s okay,’ Henna replied. ‘She’s just out of contact at the moment.’ When the dark-haired woman cast a glance in his direction he wondered how on earth Marit had failed to see the other woman’s evasion. Then again, Marit only had thought for what lay beyond the door to her brother’s office. The brunette nodded to him in deference and Lykos resisted the urge to laugh. If he hadn’t, the sound would have been bitter and cynical and, once again, his soul lashed out at the self-imposed restraints.
‘He will see you both now,’ Henna announced, finally drawing Marit’s gaze to his. Both as confused as the other, they passed Henna, who held the door open to them and closed it, leaving them alone with King Aleksander of Svardia.
He was leaning back against the front of his desk, flicking through a manila folder that seemed to contain more than a few pages. He might have appeared distracted, but Lykos knew how devious Aleksander could be when he wanted—or didn’t want—something. Refusing to make eye contact with his audience was definitely a power play by the King.
But Lykos was done with games and he had nothing left to lose. The shares he’d wanted to bring Kozlov down had completely lost all meaning. Let someone else deal with the bastard. Lykos was here for one reason only. To make sure that Marit was returned safely. After that? The only thing Lykos saw in his future was alcohol. A lot of it.
‘Still unmarried?’ It was the first thing that Aleksander said to his little sister after she’d run halfway around Europe just to find some kind of independence from this family, and it cut Lykos to realise just how little Aleksander knew his sister.Sawher.
‘Yes, Your Majesty. I am still unwed.’
Aleksander narrowed his eyes as if something in her response didn’t suit.
Lykos fisted his hands behind his back, but Aleksander’s gaze briefly landed on him as if he’d seen the motion, before returning to Marit.
‘And you are ready to take Freya’s position within the family. Her duties and...herobligations.’
It was an outrage to hear him talk of marrying off his sister as a family duty or obligation. Lykos would have dragged her with him into the greatest of poverties knowing that her love was more valuable than any position, any status, any amount of money.
‘Yes.’
There was nothing but pure conviction in the woman standing beside him. She was completely still even though she was taking a sledgehammer to what remained of his heart. He couldn’t bear to stand here and watch this. But he would. For her. Because somehow he knew that while she couldn’t look at him, couldn’t touch him, she needed him here for this.
‘André will keep his mouth shut?’
‘Yes.’ Lykos surprised the siblings by answering this time. He would make absolutely sure that nothing would taint Marit ever again.
Aleksander nodded in acknowledgement. ‘I must say, Marit, even I hadn’t thought of that loophole. I’m impressed. Marryingbeforeyou ascend to second in line to the throne could have really opened up the playing field.’
Lykos almost choked at her brother’s tone. He knew Aleksander to be a lot of things, but this seemed particularly cruel.
‘But never mind,’ the King pressed on, ‘I have found the perfect candidate to be your consort.’
‘Yes, Your Majesty.’
