“Maya,” he said softly, taking her hands in his. “Please, stop running from me. From whatever this could be between us.”
She shook her head, drawing her hands out of his, and his heart sank. She was still running away.
Luka shook his head. “Maya,” he said hoarsely, “what’s this about? I thought we were happy. I thought we had a future together.”
“But Luka—” Maya cleared her hoarse throat. “We don’t. We don’t have anythingtogether—”
“Surely you don’t mean that, Maya.” He bit down a laugh. “We’ve known each other since we were twenty-one, and I think everything between has been building up to this, right from the first time we met.” He moved toward her again, laying a hand on her cheek. “Maya, I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
“But you can’t,” she burst out finally, pacing away from him, even as he stared at her.
“Well, why not?” he demanded, advancing on her.
“Because you’ve been promised to someone else!”
“What?”
And then it all tumbled out in a rush, the Crown Princess’s plans for his marriage to Lady Karina Demidova, for the advantage it would give her reign, to control the sea routes to the south. How Maya had agreed to convince him to marry Demidova, in return for escaping her own arranged marriage to Lord Viktor Aminov.
Just the thought of her with Aminov was enough to make him clench his teeth. The man was a brute, who only cared for dominating everyone he met, no matter the situation. The only thing he respected was rank.
Andthiswas the man her father had chosen for her?
Worse than that, she was throwing him to the wolves to escape their baying herself.
“So, all these months we’ve spent together, it was all a lie,” he said slowly.
“No, of course not, Luka—”
“You knew all along that you were going to throw me aside—”
“No, that’s not what I—” Maya shook her head. “I could never be right for you, anyway, Luka, while Lady Demidovmatchesyou.”
“And you shall be the one to decide my future for me?” he snarled, as she shrank back from his anger. “You and mysister?”
“Luka—”
“Leave.” Luka drew his tattered dignity around him, feeling the broken pieces of heart scrape against each other. “You’ve overstayed your welcome. Leave at once.”
He didn’t stay to see if she did as he ordered, he was too busy striding down the halls to his study, trying to keep his anger at bay.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“You don’t need me to tell you that you’re being an idiot, do you?” Volkov’s voice was low as it came over the long distance between them, but the exasperation in his tone shone through loud and clear.
“I have no idea what you mean,” Maya said, trying to sketch out improvements to her arcane communicator. She wanted to add an encryption spell to the device, so that all communications that went through the device would be safe from would-be eavesdroppers.
Volkov sighed a very put-upon sigh. “Maya, I’m going to be honest with you now. Remember back at the Academy when I kept pushing you and Luka to become friends?”
Maya looked up in confusion, staring at the device as if she could see Volkov’s face in it. Another idea for the future.
“Yes?” she said cautiously.
“Why do you think I pushed so hard? It was obvious that you both were so alike, and then when you both became contenders for first in class—it was quite clear to me that you both had athingfor each other—”
May flushed. “I never had—he was my rival—"
“Whom you spent an inordinate amount of time talking about,” Volkov said dryly. “Don’t pretend you didn’t, you used to ask me about Luka all the time.”
