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I shrugged. “I guess I wanted proof.”
“Of what?” he asked.
“That the king was really dead. I also missed you, missed August and Atticus. I was morbidly curious, I suppose.”
Leo’s eyebrows squished together in apparent confusion. “Curious?”
I nodded. “Yes. Curious. I wondered how you all had been. I wanted to know what you were up to and if you…”
Leo slowly stood up and walked over to me, his sneakers pounding into the mat. “If we what?”
It was hard for me to admit this. At first, I pretended that I was being forced to come here, that I didn’t have a choice. But I was strong enough and capable enough to refuse. It was embarrassing to say out loud, but I wanted to be honest with Leo. “If you missed me,” I admitted. “I know it’s silly. I just wondered. I disappeared and didn’t hear from any of you, not that it was allowed. Did I even matter?”
“Of course I missed you,” Leo snapped. “I wondered about you every damn day I was stuck in the countryside. I worried you were hurt, that the queen was lying about your whereabouts. There were some nights I didn’t get a wink of sleep because I was so fucking consumed by my thoughts of you.”
I rubbed at the goose bumps on my upper arm. “Leo…”
“And then you came back, and I realized there was something far worse than missing you, Christine.” He paused to cup my cheek. “I still wish you’d consider my offer about leaving.”
I slapped his hand away, not sure how I felt about his declaration. Leo had made it very clear how he felt about having me here. “Why exactly do you want me gone?” I asked.
“It’s hard to look at you. Even now, I see you with blood splatters in your hair and that wild look in your eye. You were never meant for this kingdom, Christine. I knew it the first moment we met. I failed you that night.”
Sending me away didn’t make the hurt disappear, it just made it harder to see the bruises my trauma left behind. “You feel guilty,” I said.
He growled. “Of course I fucking feel guilty. I was supposed to protect you, Christine.”
“You’re not responsible for what happened to me, Leo. The men that hurt me are dead now. I don’t blame you. You know that, right?”
“I blame myself!” he growled while thrusting his hands through his hair in frustration. “I was an obedient soldier sending you to be fucking slaughtered. I took an oath without even considering the consequences.”
I shook my head. “What could you have possibly done? Defying King Frederick had consequences. You could have been arrested or killed. The only reason I’m even alive is because I’m a lady of the court and the queen cared about my mother. I was privileged enough to get away with murder.”
He huffed. “Privileged. Everyone keeps fucking reminding me how fucking goddamn privileged you are. How perfect you are. How much fucking better than me you are. You were good enough to get away with murder, and I wasn’t good enough to save you.”
“You had your family to think about. You couldn’t just go off risking yourself for me. Your mother needed you. Your sister—”
He cut me off with determined words. “I would give up everything to go back in time to that night and stop them from hurting you.”
I looked up into his eyes, wishing I could absolve him of the guilt he felt. But he had to sort through his own feelings. “Leo.” My tone was gentle as I looked up at him. “I don’t blame you for what happened. I truly don’t. And when it’s just us, I don’t feel like the future queen or even a lady of the court.”
He averted his gaze, a move that seemed almost shy. “I was saving up to find you, you know,” he admitted. “I was…curious too…I suppose.”
“About what?”
He reached out to tuck my hair behind my ear. “What you’d be like, stripped bare of the titles and obligations. Who you’d become when you didn’t have any royal expectations or rules placed upon your shoulders. Who we would be outside of this castle.”
I smiled up at him. “We probably could have been perfect.”
He leaned closer. “If I wasn’t a guard.”
I lifted up on my toes, our eyes locked. “If I wasn’t the future queen.”
He inhaled deeply, his eyes hooded with desire as the space between us got smaller and smaller. He eyed my lips, drinking in the sight of them with a hunger I knew well. “If I hadn’t failed you. If you hadn’t killed him.”
I flinched. His words were like a bucket of ice being dumped on my head. “If I hadn’t become a murderer, you mean. You can’t stop seeing me like that, can you?”
He sighed. “It’s not like that, Christine.”
