“I did,” I answer. “Your men are just too weak to take a punch.”
The room stands still. Izzy’s eyes meet mine across the space between us.
There’s fear there. Of course there is. But something else too—something stubborn and steady that has nothing to do with fear.
Trust.
My chest tightens.
For one terrible second another image flashes through my mind.
My mother. The night she died.
Her body between me and the gunman, the smell of smoke in the air, the crack of the shot that changed everything. I was ten years old and powerless to stop it.
Not again.
Not my queen.
“Easy,” Pavlov murmurs behind her, almost gently. His knife presses closer to her throat. “Stay still, Isabella. Or else your son will have to watch you die.”
The words make my stomach turn.
Izzy’s breathing is uneven, but she doesn’t look away from me.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
The words hit harder than any bullet.
“Don’t,” I say quietly. My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “Don’t apologize.”
Her lips tremble. “Noah?—”
“I’ll keep you safe,” I tell her. “I’ll keep you both safe.”
The promise leaves my mouth before I can think about it.
But I mean it.
Every word.
Something shifts in her expression when she hears it. A tiny spark of the same fierce courage that made her survive seven years alone with our son.
Pavlov keeps talking behind her, unaware of the silent conversation passing between us.
“You see?” he says. “This is why kings lose wars. Queens make them weak.” He grins, wicked and savage. “The night I killed your mother was the night your father fell.”
I still.
The night I killed your mother.
For decades, I’ve been told the other families had taken my mother from me. The greedy men of the previous generation, the ones who always wanted more territory, more money, more power. But part of me always suspected someone else. Another force, one that set us all against each other just to swoop in after the carnage to take our city from us. It’s part of the reason why I brokered the truce in the first place—the feeling that the enemy was never among our ranks to begin with. That it was somebody else, hiding in the shadows.
I never knew who.
Now? I do.
My grip tightens on the gun. I feel it bright and red, the fury that threatens to overcome me. To make me lose my cool, make me reckless and rash. Like my father in his grief.
