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A pair of Ray-Bans were hiked up behind his ears, holding back his dark chestnut mane. The thick stuff tumbled free as he dropped the shades over his eyes, fixing his regard out toward the ocean. Weirdly, he reminded me of Tom Skerritt in Top Gun, giving a paternal pep talk to Tom Cruise’s wigged-out Maverick. Hmm. I’d always wanted a bomber jacket.
“Operationally, Shiraz is one of the best comm techs I have ever seen in the field. He is a born natural for the task and has earned the respect and admiration of everyone who works with him. I am fucking proud of him, as his commander and as his brother, and damn glad we shall be able to call on him during times of crisis in Arcadia.” He touched a forefinger to the space between his brows then lifted it above his head and circled it twice. “Which, the Creator willing, shall not be often.”
“That all…sounds good.” I dipped my head, openly questioning him with my stare. “So what’s the problem?”
Samsyn’s nostrils flared. He leaned his head back a little, exposing the tension of his jaw to the full light of the sun. “The man can guide a team of snipers down the side of a volcano and through a village full of hostiles, but his own heart is as lost as a glass shard in a lake.” Up went the sunglasses again—as he turned the full power of his silver-blue gaze on me. “And I have been told, by some helpful little birds back home, that you might be that very special glass.”
Openly, I fidgeted. Privately, I tried to breathe away the wild thunder in my chest. No good. With tight teeth, I dealt with the tumult. Finally muttered, offering him a wad of tissues from my purse, “Helpful little birds, my ass.”
“Jayd and Crista are as worried about him as I am,” he rebutted. “We all are—except, perhaps, for my parents.” His expression discernibly tightened, though I couldn’t tell if the cause was the subject of his parents or the mess along his leg. “Sometimes, leaving them out of this kind of shit is better for all concerned.”
Okay, it was about Ardent and Xaria. “And sometimes, maybe they can help.” I jerked a little at the new intensity in his stare—bordering now on a glare—but squared my shoulders a little higher. “Maybe you should enlist the queen mother and king father to help talk some sense into your hopeless romantic of a sibling.”
Inside an instant, the Syn scowl was gone—overtaken by a laugh so hard, his head fell back. “Ohhhh, Lucina. That made up for turning me into a walking sweet stick.” He cocked a broad smile back my way. “Over the years, we have used many words with which to identify Shiraz Noir. ‘Hopeless’ has never been one of them—and neither has ‘romantic’.”
“Then perhaps you all need to remind him of that?” I arched peeved brows. “Because he sure as hell wouldn’t hear it from me.” Recognizing I’d all but admitted to what happened with Shiraz now, I lunged to my feet, needing to pace out my frustration. The warrior had gotten me started; he was sure as hell going to hear my side of the story now. “We shared…moments, okay? And they were amazing, incredible, astounding…”
I stopped, watching a flurry of dandelion stars swirl by on the breeze. One of the stems stopped, caught on a crosswind.
Suspended…in a moment.
“Perfect,” I rasped, before the wisp as well my senses tumbled back to terra firma. “Anyway.” I cleared my throat. “You get the idea, yeah?”
Samsyn huffed out a laugh. “To be honest, Lucina, I do not.” He answered my scowl with a slow shake of his head. “Moments,” he repeated, chuckling again. “Are you certain it was actually my brother Shiraz with you? A little leaner and prettier than me? Dark blue eyes, smells fairly nice”
He had to remind me.
And confuse me.
I plunked back down. Flattened my lips. “You’re missing the fucking point.”
“Which is?”
“That they were just moments, Samsyn—and no matter how axis-altering they were, we can’t spin them into anything more.” I gazed out toward the sea, wishing the clarification for all of this would just get farted across the sky in wisps out the back of a skywriting plane. “I’m not right for him, dammit.” Just. Say. It. “I’m…not good enough.”
He let me sit with that disgusting tidbit as he rose and walked the tissue to a trashcan. When he returned, he didn’t sit again. Faced the bench with both hands jammed into his pockets, stance deceptively casual. His gaze studied every person in the park. “That was a sincere admission,” he offered. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Now I shall ask for another.”
My hands twisted together again. “Go for it.”
He tilted his head so our gazes fully met. “Do you love him?”
Half a second—if that—clicked before my reply. “With all my heart and soul, Samsyn.”
He looked back toward the grass. “Well, that is bloody good enough for me.”
I let a rough sound rush up my throat. “No, dammit.” I shoved back to my feet. “It’s not good enough. Shiraz can’t see it, but I need you to, okay?” I grabbed him by the sturdy crook of his elbow. “Samsyn, he’s a prince—”
“That has not escaped my attention.”
“—and he needs a woman by his side worthy of being called a princess,” I powered on, ignoring his sarcasm. “A princess, okay? He doesn’t get that right now because he’s thinking with his dick instead of his brain, but one day, he’s going to wake the hell up and remember it—as well as the duty to his people that he holds so high.”
Somewhere along the line, the man had cocked a noticeable brow at me. Now the other jumped up, making it a matched set. “And that is when you think he will gravitate back to Ambyr Stratiss?”
“Maybe,” I murmured, not really meaning it. Picturing Shiraz with the woman, complete with her entitlement issues, brought on a fresh shiver. “Or maybe not. It doesn’t have to be her. There are lots of other fish in the Arcadian Sea, right?”
