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The words sliced, quick and clean, at his heart. Lykos shook his head. ‘I...’ Shame and grief and loss swirled like a noxious substance in his stomach. ‘What if she didn’t want me? What if she’d moved on and I was a reminder ofhim? What if all I could ever be to her was pain?’
The empathy burning in Theron’s eyes was almost enough to push him over the edge. He shook his head again. The friend closer to him than any brother could have been put a hand on his shoulder.
‘Lykos, we all make mistakes. As children, when it is done by adults, it is inconceivable to us. Your mother thought what she was doing was right, of that I have no doubt. But if you want to find out, to track her down, then know that we’ll be here for you. Summer, me. Even Kyros. You think you don’t have a family, you think you’re alone, but we’re here. For you. So if you ever want to find her, say the word. It’s done.’
Reeling with shock from Theron’s words, his offer, Lykos realised that he’d never, not once, wondered if his mother had made the wrong decision. Perhaps because he’d had to be completely sure that she was right because emotionally that had been the only way he could make peace with the situation.
It was as if a giant fissure had cracked open in the ground beneath him.
‘What?’ demanded Theron, who must have picked up on it.
‘My mother was trying to do the right thing.’
‘Of course,’ Theron replied as if it were obvious, and then, his eyes narrowing in understanding, ‘like Marit,’ he concluded.
But Lykos had to dispute it. ‘Theron... She is aprincess. I am little more than a street thief with a bank account.’
Theron was silent for a long time. Long enough to draw Lykos’s gaze.
‘Is that what you think?Skatá, Lykos. I saw the way she looked at you.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Do you love her?’
‘With every single beat of my heart and breath I have left on this earth.’ The sincerity of his words spoke to the depth of their souls as if it were a prayer and a promise. For a shocking second Lykos felt a hot damp heat against his eyelids and fisted his hands until it went away. He used the anger. Fed off it to push the sorrow back down where it belonged. He wrestled with the idea that she might have made a mistake, thought through the logic and tested it against what he knew of her and her situation.
‘She is sacrificing herself and they don’t even see it. Her family, they are supposed to protect her. They are supposed to put her first. I swear, Theron, if she marries this guy, it will kill her. Slowly, bit by bit and day by day, it will ruin everything that is pure and perfect about her.’
Words choked in his throat and he threw back another mouthful of whisky to ease the tightness.
‘You want me to dig up some dirt on him?’ Theron offered.
‘And, what, we blackmail them? They’re kings, Theron.Actualroyalty.’
‘And maybe you’re letting that mess with your head.’
‘What do you mean?’ Lykos growled in warning.
‘You were the greatest pickpocket in Athens, Lykos, or are you so ashamed of your past that you forget who you were? Who youare,’ he stressed, staring Lykos dead in the eye with a determination and fire that Lykos felt in his soul. ‘You say that it will kill her, marrying this guy? Then stop it. Do what you have to do to save her. She might want to do what is right, Lykos, but if you say it’s wrong I believe you and I will support you one hundred per cent.’
‘And I do what, kidnap her on her wedding day,again?’
‘For real this time? Absolutely. So, what do you say?’
‘I say,’ Lykos said, standing from the chair, ‘that the Pickpocket of Piraeus is going to attempt his greatest act of thievery yet. I’m going to steal a princess.’
Marit stood in the stone corridor of the Svardian family chapel. It had been there for as long as there had been a palace. She smoothed a palm over the large solid blocks of stone that made up the walls of the small church. Cold to the touch, Marit found it fitting somehow. Beyond dark wooden doors, her brother, the priest and her groom waited. The agreement between the two families had been made, Marit not really aware of the specifics. Her brother’s machinations had long since stopped surprising her. Her greatest regret was simply that her sister wasn’t there.
Her parents were still on their year-long sabbatical, protocol thankfully meaning that they were out of contact to all their children for the first three hundred and sixty-five days of the new monarch’s rule. Marit didn’t mind so much about the parents who had been little better than absent for most of her life, but she missed Freya terribly.
She wasn’t quite sure where Freya was. She could have sworn that she’d heard one of the staff talk about her return to the palace, but Marit hadn’t been able to find her and she wasn’t answering her calls. Her absence had stung at first, until she remembered that her sister wasn’t the source of her hurt and it had lessened the ache in her chest. Instead, Marit had drawn on the love she’d felt from Lykos to fill the void in her heart, realising that in the end, whether she spoke to Freya or not, she would marry Prince Henrik and do her duty by her country.
She ran a slightly damp hand down the front of her dress, smoothing imaginary wrinkles from the silk. It was a pretty dress this time and, while it might not be what she would have chosen for herself—an image of the stunning dress she’d worn to Victoriana flashing in her mind’s eye—at least it fitted.
Footsteps clacked on the stone flooring, coming towards her, and for an insane moment she hoped that it was Lykos, come to whisk her away. Her heart pounded in her chest and her cheeks flushed with anticipation, her hopes crashing to the ground when she caught sight of Henna coming around the corner.
‘Your Highness?’ she said, rushing towards Marit in concern.
