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And up. And up.
Madelyn knew where she was going. She’d dutifully looked at the images while flying over the Atlantic. The Hermitage had been built centuries ago to honor an Ilonian king. It had been carved into the mountain itself and still stood proudly, famous for the lights that beamed out from this otherwise restricted island when a royal was in residence, like a beacon over the archipelago.
Or like the ego of the man she knew waited within.
But there was no point in worrying abouthimjust yet, Madelyn told herself. First, there was living through this hike.
The wind picked up as she trudged up the path, doing her best to huddle against the side of the mountain without seeming to do exactly that. She did still have her pride, after all. Pride that was hard-won and well deserved—and she was keenly aware that every step she took drew her closer and closer to one of the major reasons she’d had to fight so hard in the first place.
She didn’t like to think about those last few weeks of her study-abroad adventure at Cambridge. Those clear, sunny days that everyone in England had told her were unusual, especially as it wasn’t beastly hot, either. The days had been so long. The evenings had stretched on into forever.
And the sweet, warm nights had changed her whole life.
She could still hear his laughter, like it might dance on the wind in this lonely place the way it had seemed to all along the River Cam. She could see all that light and magic sparking in his unusual green eyes, nearly as turquoise as the sea she’d imagined would surround the fanciful island kingdom she’d known—vaguely—he came from.
Just as she could remember how it had ended. Her flight back home had been canceled at the last minute, leaving her with an extra night in England. Instead of staying down in London, she’d taken the train back up to Cambridge. She’d been so thrilled that she would get to surprise him. She’d been sosurehe would welcome that surprise. She hadn’t stopped to think twice. She hadn’t stopped or thought at all.
It was cringeworthy, looking back. Madelyn had to take care she didn’t cringe herself right off the side of the slick, cold mountain.
Madelyn had hurried into the endless party that was forever going on in the private house where he lived. It sometimes appeared to be a communal-living situation with his friends and sometimes seemed to be only his—he had waved a hand and changed the subject whenever it was raised—but in either case, she had pushed her way through the usual throngs of people and darted up the stairs, bursting with excitement.
But those guards of his that she’d come to consider friends barred her way.
Worse, they’d looked at her with pity. And hadn’t let her into his rooms.
And she’d known full well, by then, that there was only ever one reason they kept the Prince from his adoring friends and fans. It was still embarrassing, even now as she tracked up the side of this endless mountain, to remember how long it had taken for the penny to drop. How humiliatingly long she’dstoodthere, staring up at his guards in disbelief because they had always been so friendly to her before and what could possibly have changed...?
“Idiot,” she muttered to herself now, picking up her pace on the narrow path. “Complete and utterfool.”
She told herself the good thing about remembering all the actual details she usually preferred to gloss over these days was that she wasn’t tempted to look off the side of the path or imagine, in dizzying detail, exactly what would happen to her if she slipped...
Better to think of that first, perhaps more painful fall, back in Cambridge.
In the present, Madelyn blew out a breath. Back then, she’d turned away from those great doors and his pitying guards. Eventually. But that hadn’t been an improvement, because one of his slinky friends waited there, at the top of the stairs. Very much as if she’d gone out of her way to follow Madelyn up from the crowded lounge.
In the aftermath, Madelyn had returned to that moment again and again, and she could only conclude that Annabel—who was Lady Something-or-other-unutterably-posh, yet spent the bulk of her time partying with her family’s money—had almost certainly seen Madelyn enter the house. And had followed her up the stairs to take pleasure in what she would find here.
But that night, Annabel had pretended to be sympathetic.
With the same insincerity she’d used while pretending to be friendly over those last few weeks.
Darling, Annabel had purred.You look positivelycrestfallen. I did warn him that you couldn’t possibly know how these games are played. But he’s careless, you see. He always has been. No one ever dared tell him not to break his toys.
What was funny, Madelyn thought as she kept marching resolutely uphill, was that for some time after she’d slunk back to spend a terrible night on a shiny terminal floor in Heathrow, she’d imagined that moment between her and the smirking, completely phony Annabel was the worst of it.
When it had only been the beginning.
It was that last thought that calmed her, though she sped up even more. She wanted out of the cold. Out of the pelting hail. She wanted to do what she’d agreed to do, then march herself right back down to the brittle Angelique, express her sympathies that she’d been unsuccessful because she was sure she would be, and head right back to her life.
Like everything else in life, the only way out was through.
The Madelyn who had staggered out of that house in Cambridge, heartsick and bewildered, had been weak. Foolish and silly, just as Annabel had always intimated, and the fact she had to admit that to herself stung. It had been a bitter pill then and it never got any less bitter.
It was just that Madelyn had grown stronger.
She’d had no choice. She’d lost everything she’d thought mattered to her, as surely as if she’d set her life on fire. But it turned out she was a phoenix, because she’d learned how to rise up anyway. These days, she thought of the fire as the thing that had made her, not destroyed her.
And all this was, she thought as she wound around the side of the mountain again and saw that stone-cut building before her in the gloom, was a little bit of leftover ash. Easily enough given over to the wind, then hopefully forgotten.
