Gen’s lips part as she lets out a gasp. So Ididcatch her by surprise, waiting for her here in the glasshouse. She’s still as predictable as she was nine years ago. There’s no place my princess would rather be than retreating to her glasshouse after the shock of seeing me again. She still comes to this small room—the place I helped build with my father for her, all those years ago.
She looks even better than I remembered: the rich strands of peach and honey in her hair, the way her dark-blue eyes shine with surprise. She makes a sensual little gasp through her parted lips as her gaze meets mine.
I want to devour that sound and draw even more from her. I want to explore her fuller figure and trace the changes in her body over all these years. But most of all, I want to make her ache and hurt. I want to ruin her for the way she ruined me.
“Itisyou.” Her voice comes out as a hoarse whisper, and she takes a tentative step closer—bare arms outstretched before tugging themback to her sides. There’s a hardness in her expression that I’ve never seen on her sweet face. “How? Why are you here?” She gestures to the small space we share.
“I told you I was back, Gen.”Back to make you pay.
She bites her lower lip, just as she always has. A hand slides to her chest, and I take in the sheer nightdress she’s wearing.
“But—but you’re dead. You…”
Her voice sounds raw with pain—pain I never expected from her, not after all these years. I thought she’d forgotten me long ago, especially after hearing the rumors of her gift and the power she’s wielded over other men.
“Why did you think I was dead?”
She turns away, her attention fixed on a begonia with long, speckled leaves. The names of these rare plants come back to me like old friends. This one, in particular, is the hybrid my father and I bred—white speckles framed by green and pink. Begonia Gen. The plant I gave her when she turned seventeen, shortly after I realized I loved her.
“We received a report not long after you left,” she mutters, her gaze still averted.
“Ah. That should have been limited to my father. But in a way, you’re right—Kieran Greenbluff died long ago. I’m Morris Blackwell now.”
She looks up at me, hurt flickering in her eyes. Why does she care? Why does she look like she never recovered from my disappearance?
“You never came home. All these years—why return now?”
I want to reach out and smooth the pain from her face, but that goes against everything I’ve planned. I didn’t expect to feel anything for her. Not after so many years, and not after everything I’ve endured to get here. Not after I let every feeling for Genevieve Ashcroft die.
“I’m here strictly for business, nothing more.” I cross my arms as she stares at me with wide, wounded eyes. “By the way, I hear congratulations are in order.”
I can’t stop watching her every movement—the tiny prickles on her skin at the mention of her engagement, the way she turns her face to avoid my gaze.
“Thank you.”
“Prince Leland is a good man. You’re lucky to have made such a match.” The words taste bitter. I pity Leland for being attached to such a woman, and yet I’m still as drawn to her as I was when I was young. I don’t tell her that I encouraged Leland to pursue the match. Not because she deserves him, but because I know Leland can fix the broken pieces of this country. He can make improvements that will benefit redbloods across Naseria, including the miners I once worked beside.
“I am, indeed. It’s an arrangement that will benefit both our kingdoms.”
Ah, she admits what Leland already told me. This isn’t a great love match. It seems both of them are approaching their union with the same pragmatism Gen always had.
“Still so practical, Gen?”
She wrinkles her nose at me. “Don’t call me that. I’m Princess Genevieve, and you’re Mr. Blackwell now. Of course I’m still putting my kingdom first. That will never change.”
I snort. Of course, that will never change with Genevieve Ashcroft. Nothing has ever been as important to her as her duty to Naseria—not even the love I once had for her. She broke any hope that she’d choose me long ago, but the way she tossed me aside after a childhood of friendship and years of mutual love still stings. Especially how herrejection led to the hell I endured deep underground in the helachite mines.
No, Genevieve Ashcroft doesn’t know what love is. Not toward me and certainly not with the rumored conquests she’s taken, thanks to her cursed gift. Soon she’ll be as brittle and broken as her own mother, that damned crown of helachite atop her head. And I’m willingly letting Leland pursue a marriage with her.
“That’s not what the rumors of your behavior a few years ago indicated. Tell me,Gen—did you enjoy breaking all those men’s hearts?”
She looks at me as if I’ve struck her before hissing, “Don’t speak to me with such impertinence. You have no idea how I’ve struggled.”
How dare she speak of struggling when I’ve been through the depths of hell and back to become who I am today. How couldshe, a spoiled princess, ever understand what it is to struggle? To suffer?
I let my eyes linger on the pale nightgown, her ample breasts above a soft stomach unbound by a corset. The changes in her body make her all the more beautiful—soft and lush and as poisonous as a sweet pea.
“It looks to me like you don’t know what struggling is.”
