My heart squeezes.
No. Not Lee. His Royal Highness, Crown Prince Killian Valtiere.
His blond hair is darker in the moonlight, his eyes deep pools. He looks like a stranger in his royal clothing, all white and velvet and bright, braided gold. But when he moves toward me, the confidence in his step is utterly familiar. I used to love to watch him striding toward me, knowing I was his to touch. To kiss.
To love.
It hurts so much I can hardly breathe.
As he nears, I take a step back without thinking. He stops, pursing his lips.
“Thank you for coming,” he says. “I’m sure this has been… a shock.”
Anguish swells through me at his words, and I cross my arms, looking tough but actually needing to hold myself together in front of him.
This person I know intimately and also not at all.
“Why did you do it?” I ask, trying to sound strong. Putting steel in my voice so he can’t see the way he’s shattered me. “Why did you hide who you were? Why did you get involved with mein the first place…your highness?” The words taste acidic on my tongue.
When I was lying on my bunk, imagining this moment with him, I thought I’d be a terrifying sight to behold—the Alleycat of the fighting pits in all her glory, spitting mad. But face-to-face with him, I can’t ignore the grief throbbing behind my breastbone.
“Mer,” he says, stepping toward me again slowly, hands held out in a quelling motion. I’m reminded of the day we met and the way he calmed the wild horse. “I never wanted to hurt you. The moment I first set eyes on you, rushing up to me and your sister that day in the market—I knew instantly, Meryn. You had this alleycat fierceness, this spark to you, that was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. You were the blinding beauty of the sun personified.”
He’s close enough now to reach out and touch me, and a traitorous part of me aches for that, for the arms I know so well to fold around me once more, comforting me.
I squash it. Fuck that feeling. Instead, I shoot him a glare that stops him in his tracks.
“I would’ve done anything to spend time with you, kitten,” he says quietly. “Anything to have the honor of holding you in my arms.”
Straightening to my full height, I say, “So you chose to lie.”
Lee—Killian—runs a hand through his thick hair in frustration. “What should I have done instead? My title has always defined me, but I didn’t choose this life. I hid the truth about my identity so you could get to know me, the real me, without the unbearable weight of the crown bearing down on us from the start. Aside from my job and the details about my parents, everything I’ve ever told you about myself has been true. But if you’d known I was the crown prince, you never would’ve given us a chance.”
Heat burns behind my eyes and I realize that, mortifyingly, I might be on the verge of tears. He’s right, we never would’ve been together if I’d known he was the prince. That perfect year together, feeling like I finally found a match, an equal—it would’ve never existed.
But maybe that’s the way things should’ve been. “You took my ability to make that decision away from me,” I say, my voice cold. “And it changes nothing, in the end. You’re still my future king and I’m still commoner scum, even now that I’m Bonded.”
His gazes grows stormy at that. “You’re notscum.”
I laugh bitterly. “If that was true, you would’ve been honest with me. The fact that you didn’t even tell me after I’d enlisted, when you were telling me all about the Bonded Trials?—”
“Would that have made things better for you?” he says, cutting me off, the volume of his voice rising. “You had just lost your sister. You had made a life-altering decision. Should I have piled onto your misery by exposing myself, right as you were putting your life on the line? Goddess, Meryn, I never in a million years expected you tobond. I didn’t think you’d be coming to the castle. I assumed I had plenty of time to tell you the truth when you’d come back from the front with Saela.”
Hearing him say her name breaks the dam holding back my tears. They come fast down my face, their heat burning my cheeks.
“And speaking of that,” I say, tasting salt. “Why the fuck have you not doneanythingabout the Nabbers? You knew! You were staying in the commoner quarters regularly, you knew exactly what has been happening to our kids!”
The rage has finally reached a breaking point inside of me, and I close the gap between us with two quick steps, pounding my fists on his chest hard enough to bruise.
“Why haven’t you fucking stopped them? My sister isgone!”
Lee wraps his arms around me, pulling me closer to him, even as I continue to rain my fists on him. He yanks me into a tight embrace, my tears running down the front of his shirt, his chin tucked over the top of my head.
Pine, he still smells like pine, I think stupidly. Every part of my body wants to press itself against him, lighting up at this familiar scent.
“Kitten,” he says, his breath warm on my hair. “Of course I’ve been trying to stop them. I’ve had my guards hunting them since the very first time you mentioned them.”
He pulls back and I look up at him. His eyes are pained.
