“You’re acting like I asked you to hurt her. Yes. I need you to kidnap her.” Amos puffed out his cheeks with a harsh exhale. “She still won’t speak to me and I’m going fucking crazy.”
“You realize she might try to kill you for this,” Rainer cautioned. “Hell, she’ll probably try to kill me too.”
“If Isabella didn’t speak to you for years and you couldn’t go to her, I’d kidnap her for you,” Amos said. “Family is supposed to help each other out.”
“First,” Rainer said, holding up a finger. “I would never piss Isabella off enough to ignore me for almost four years.”
Amos tutted. “Never say never.”
“Second,” Rainer went on, ignoring him, “How exactly do you expect me to get Clover back here? She can kick both of our asses.”
Amos grinned. “I picked up a tonic at the illegal market last week in the capital.”
Rainer’s mouth dropped open. “You want me to drug her? Why are you smiling?”
“You’re not drugging her,” Amos corrected him. “You’re holding a cloth over her nose so she goes to sleep.”
“That’s the same thing.”
Amos tilted his head side to side. “I don’t think it is. Besides, I tested it out on myself to make sure it was safe.”
“They could have given you poison, you idiot,” his cousin said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Where would we be if you were dead?”
“You’d take the throne. Besides, I tried it out on a man who deserved to die first.”
Rainer muttered something under his breath. “Fine,” he relented, “but only because I don’t go back on my word, and I’d like to see the broken nose she gives you when she wakes up.”
Amos clapped him on the shoulder. “I knew you’d come around.”
Amos hung the last flower from the string in his room and stepped back to inspect the dissected bouquet.
“Why are you drying flowers?” Jennifer asked as she waltzed in and plopped into one of the two chairs in the corner of his bedroom. “Do you have a girlfriend who likes dead things?”Yes, I do.
“That’s none of your business,” he retorted. He and Jennifer had formed a friendship, but he still didn’t trust her enough to tell her about Clover or the Hydra. Hemighthave told her his true mate had died and he was too scared to tell his father. The story was weak at best, but she never questioned it.
“I bet you do,” she teased. “That’s where you disappear to all the time, isn’t it?”
“Also none of your business.”
Taking off his hat, he walked into his closet and hung it on one of the hooks. Next, he removed his vest, daggers, and belts.
“I don’t care that you’re sleeping with someone, but you can’t bring your mistress into our house. I don’t want to be humiliated in front of the staff.”
Amos poked his head out of the closet. “I’m not fucking anyone, Jenn, and I wouldn’t disrespect you by parading around mistresses if I was.”
“And I wouldn’t disrespect you with parading around a string of men either,” she promised.
He ventured back into the bedroom and sat in the other chair adjacent to hers. “If you have a boyfriend, we can hire him on so it’s easier for you to see him.”
Jennifer laid her head back with a dramatic sigh. “No man is stupid enough to touch the prince’s mate.” She lifted her head to look at him. “When will this charade be over anyway? You never answer when I ask.”
Amos sat back. “When I take the throne and my father is no longer a threat to either of us.”
“Your father expects us to marry when we turn twenty-two,” she reminded him. “I don’t want to marry you.”
He scrubbed a hand down his face, suddenly exhausted from the day. “I don’t know, but I’ll figure it out.”
“Oh, I wrote the letters you asked for.” She disappeared into his sitting room and reappeared with a stack of papers. “Are you ever going to tell me why you ask me to write these things?”
