Everything crumbled. Nearly overnight. Any prosperity to be had in the country was gone. And he had been used for labor by the people who had taken him in.
At least there had been food and shelter. Though that had not lasted either.
Softness was not something he had experience with. She would not get it from him now.
“We are flying back to my country tonight.”
“How did you find me?” she demanded, the haughty, glittering green gaze that of a princess, however humble her clothing was.
“It was a mistake of your father to tell your brothers where you were. They’re fools. Your father is not a fool, though he is a man who looks out for his own interests. I understand that he was afraid I would not be interested in guarding that which he valued. He made an alliance with my enemy, and I imagine he fears me for that reason. He should fear me. But with you in the palace, he should know that he is safe. But I will also expect an alliance in return.”
“He isn’t going to take kindly to you kidnapping me.”
“But I didn’t. Because he sold you to me. I will send him the bride price that is in the paperwork.”
“A bride price?”
“Did you not know? It is not just eased trade and military alliances.”
“Well, that means he decided that he didn’t want the payment as much as he wanted to keep me safe.”
“That is one way of looking at it, I suppose. The truth is, I think what he was afraid of is that I might seek to uncoversome of the more nefarious things he engaged in with my predecessor.”
“You can say whatever you want about my father, but Cape Blanco is not a dictatorship, and he did not commit human rights violations, not like the man who ruled your country.”
“No,” he said. “He didn’t. You are correct about that. He was too smart to do it here. Too smart to do anything to his own people. But I’m willing to let bygones be bygones. For the strength of my nation.”
If he could, he would see the destruction of every corrupt man. But unfortunately, corrupt men were the pillars of society. It made it difficult. What he had discovered when he had begun his mission for revolution, to reclaim the throne, was that he could not be a purist. There was no place in the world for a purist. Only for strength.
He could only do so much. He couldn’t change the entire system. What he could do was save his own country.
And Princess Fernanda was part of that salvation whether she wanted to be or not.
“Are we riding your horse back to Asland?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
They had landed the plane in a covert area in a desolate place in the Highlands, with permission from the Scottish government. He had told them it was a matter of diplomacy, and no one had pressed. As long as he was leaving as quickly as he had come, no details were required.
The cargo area of the plane was open, and gripping Fernanda tightly, he rode the horse up the walkway and straight into the stable area in the cargo hold.
“Why the horse? You could have a fleet of sports cars down here.”
“I could.” He didn’t offer her any explanation.
He didn’t owe her one.
She was not so foolish as to think that her happiness, her desires, anything played into the way that the world ran. She was like him. In a fashion. She had grown up in a royal family. And even though he had grown up outside of one, the reality of being a king informed everything he did.
They might have been able to remove him from the palace. To remove him from the throne, but they had never been able to remove the responsibility he had to his country, to his people.
It was part of who he was. The very blood in his veins.
He’d had amnesia, still did. And yet he had always known who he was, with a deep certainty. There had been years when the true meaning of that had been lost to him, but he had never fully lost himself.
When he knew nothing, he knew he was the rightful king of Asland.
When he knew nothing, he knew that his father’s blood called him to power.
