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She searched my face, puzzled and embarrassed. Her smile broke through her sadness and confusion. “Stop that. I’m no such thing.”
Now I made sure she could tell I was serious, deadly serious. “You are though, Sara. Your mark….” I nodded toward where she held the fabric to her bosom. “I am not repulsed. I am in shock.”
Her hand instinctively went to her ribcage beneath her full, ample breast. “That’s crazy. So, it’s just a mark…. It’s not…”
“It is.”
She wasn’t hearing me; she couldn’t. “I’m just a girl from the village, Bors. You know that.”
She was anything but just a girl, princess or not. Still, I knew I was going to have to prove it to her. I glanced around the room. There was hardly any evidence of Angelica’s profession, but one important thing sat on the mantel: a small, round looking glass.
Rising from next to Sara, I took it and handed it to her. The silver beneath the glass had crackled slightly, and the edges of the pattern made reflections from the firelight scatter around the room. “See for yourself,” I said, again dropping to one knee.
“Stop this nonsense right now,” she said, a bit impatiently and angrily as she snatched the mirror away. “I’ll prove it to you.” She dropped the bedclothes from her chest and placed the mirror beneath her creamy, full breast. I knew that I should look away—it was a capital crime to look at a naked royal body. But I couldn’t drag my eyes off of her.
“Look,” she said, as she angled the mirror to see for herself. “It’s just a…” Her lips parted, and her eyes went wide. She was as floored as I had been. She’d had no idea of who she really was.
With her first finger, she delicately traced the moon and then raised her eyes to me. Though I knew I should look away, there was not a fucking chance. Sara lowered the mirror and stared at me. “This has to be some sort of mistake. It’s a birthmark, nothing more.”
If the birthmark hadn’t been enough, looking at her now left zero doubt in my mind. She had the same black hair as King Rowan. And those crystal-clear green eyes were the same as the stories of the first queen, the queen who had died in childbirth.
How many songs had been sung about Sara and her mother both? And now here she was. “It’s you. You’re the stolen child. Surely someone in your family must have known.”
She tossed the mirror away and reached out to me, trying to draw me to her again. “None of that matters, Bors. None of it. Please, please listen to me. All my life I have been dreaming of you, without even knowing such happiness could exist. And now I’ve found you, it makes no difference who I was once. No one needs to know. Nobody will see me like this, nobody but you.” She wrapped her arms around me, holding me close. But I was rigid as a knight in full armor. “Hold me,” she said. “Please hold me. Forget what you’ve seen. I’m just me. Sara.”
I could not. I could not touch her in the way I had once, not ever again. It was fucking agony but there was nothing I could do to change what she was, or what I was. We were subject and ruler; no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t breed her into commonness. “You need to sleep, my lady.”
She held me tight, panicked and angry. “Stop acting like you don’t know me,” she said, halfway between a sob and a yell. Her chest heaved hard against mine with each deep inhalation. “I’m still me, Bors. Please. Take me in your arms. Make love to me,” she said, now sobbing freely. “Let’s just pretend that none of this has happened. Please. You like when I beg, yes? Please, please. Let’s go back to the way it was.”
“What you’re asking is impossible,” I said, and pulled free of her embrace. I took a bundle of blankets from the floor, gathering them around her, averting my eyes from her flesh.
On one hand, I was shielding her royal body from my common gaze, but the blankets had another purpose—the sight of her skin made me fucking wild and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to restrain myself.
Sara’s emotions overcame her, and she sobbed into the bedclothes, curling back into that little ball she’d made when first I saw her birthmark and pulled away from her in shock.
I couldn’t begin to imagine what she must be feeling, but her body language was clear—she felt rejected that I hadn’t met her desire with my own. It fucking killed me to think that my actions were hurting her.
Mixed with my agony at hurting her was an overpowering rage at the thought of losing her for good. I felt like punching through every fucking wall of the cottage—a happy life with her had been so close, but now it was so goddamned far away that I could barely imagine it.
