Tears overflowed, making hot paths down her cheeks. “Please be safe, my love.”
“I will.” He kissed her again slowly, lingeringly. “And I’ll return to make you my queen.”
She would have laughed at his words not long ago—how impossible they sounded. And yet, she had come to know him well over their time together. Had come to know him outside and in. She knew he believed the words he spoke, the vows he made. She knew he loved her and that he intended to come back for her.
However, she also understood that if he were, by some stroke of fortune, able to regain his throne, his life would not be his. And marrying a childless widow who was possibly barren would not be the proper course for a ruler who intended to secure his kingdom. Understanding beat sure in her heart—if he miraculously survived whatever plot he had to regain power from his uncle, she would have to let him go.
“There is something I want you to have, to keep, until I return,” he said suddenly, taking her hand, opening it.
The familiar cool metal of his ring, warmed by his skin, slid heavy and smooth against her palm.
“Your ring?” She tried to pull her hand away, for such a gift felt disturbingly like an admission he would not come back to her. “But you wear it always. You cannot give it to me.”
“My mother gifted me this ring,” he said quietly, pressing it into her palm, gently but forcefully holding her fingers, making her accept it as hers now. “It is all I have left of her. When I was being held in the dungeon, they took everything of value from me, but I had the forethought to bury this in the dirt. When I was freed, I dug it up and brought it with me. It’s never left my finger until today.”
She had wondered at the meaning, but she had never imagined it possessed such significance. “I can’t accept it, Theo. It is yours.”
“Youare mine, and I want you to keep the ring for me. It is my promise I’ll return. Wear it around your neck and think of me. Think of how I love you.”
Her heart was breaking, but her fingers curled over the ring. “I’ll keep it as you ask.”
“Thank you.” He kissed her again. “You are too good to me, Pamela.”
But she wasn’t good enough. He would see one day, God willing. And she would bear that day somehow, because she loved Theo. Loved the cool-eyed stranger with his scars and demons. Loved every part of him.
“I will always love you,” she told him.
“And I will always, always love you. I leave you now for the sake of my people, but I’ll return for you. This, I vow.” In the darkness of the early morning’s faint glow, he held two fingers to his lips and kissed them before lifting them into the air. “For Boritania.”
How brave he was, how strong. He had suffered so that his siblings would live. Had refused to renounce his mother despite the vicious torture his uncle had inflicted upon him. And now, he was returning to the land that had so betrayed him.
She thought again of what he had told her, what now seemed a lifetime ago.It’s not a woman I mourn, but the man I once was.But he had always been the man who was destined to rule a kingdom, and she understood it now in a way she hadn’t before.
He had first come to her as a stranger in the night.
But he was leaving her as a king.
A chill traveled down her spine as she returned his gesture and repeated his words. “For Boritania. Long live the true king.”
He kissed her one last time, and then, like a wraith in the night, he was gone.
As if he had never been.
There was nothing remaining but the scent of him on her bedclothes and the ache he’d left in her heart.
* * *
LeavingPamela had been more difficult than Theo had imagined it would be. He had left his homeland, bleeding and betrayed and nearly dead, and he had not once looked back to the shores as his ship had drifted away.
And yet, when he slipped from Hunt House just after dawn, he had looked back. He had looked to her window, to the lone candle burning there in vigil, so many times. More than he had counted. It had required all the determination in his soul—the need to help his people, to avenge his mother, to save his sisters—to keep his boots moving.
It was that determination which took him back to Archer Tierney, his unlikely friend and savior, one last time.
Tierney met with him in his study, and it didn’t escape his notice that there was a Boritanian purple cloak draped over a chair in plain view. A garment which could only belong to one person.
“Stasia is here?” he asked Tierney, confused, for they had said their farewells already.
Indeed, they had agreed that the less they saw of each other, the better, now that their plan was underway. There was no need for her presence this morning. Nor for the danger slipping from their uncle’s guards could bring down upon her head.
