Page 74 of Fit for a King

Shit. That wasn’t a good start after what happened last night.

“Your Majesty.”

His jaw bunched, but he didn’t fight it, didn’t ask me to call him Nicholas.

What was I even doing here?

It made my chest ache, this tension between us, and I couldn’t look at him when it felt like this. My eyes fell to the window, where Solterra passed by in a blur of vibrant color, and I felt the need to say something, anything.

“You made them wonder last night.”

He didn’t answer right away, and I didn’t know if he’d heard me, but then he said, “I know.”

“You made Prince Alejandro wonder.”

“I know that too.”

My eyes snapped to his, and the look I saw there wasn’t what I expected. I thought maybe he’d be defensive about what had happened, but there was a mix of shame and regret that dulled his beautiful blues.

“He said something to you, didn’t he?”

Nicholas looked down at his gloves, and that was answer enough.

My stomach turned. “What did he say?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does if it was about me. About us.”

Nicholas’s shoulders dropped. “He noticed too much. Let’s leave it at that.”

Oh God. I knew it. I knew the prince was more perceptive than his charm let on.

I felt my face getting hot. “You just couldn’t help it, could you?” I said. “All this because you couldn’t stand to see me smile at someone else.”

Nicholas flinched. “I know.”

“Where do you get off doing that? I had to watch you sit beside him and let him touch your hand and hear him talk about your future and I behaved, but you couldn’t let his staff even speak to me without causing a scene?”

He rubbed at the space between his brows. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

He sounded so defeated. I wanted him to argue, to fight back, to use all that royal command to tell me he could behave any way he wanted—but he didn’t, and somehow that was worse.

“I’m not angry that you were jealous,” I said. “I live with my jealousy over not having your future. I get it. But this could cost me everything, you know that.”

His hand clenched around the gloves. “I would never let anything happen to you.”

“You might not be able to stop it.”

Nicholas looked at me, the pain in his eyes clear. “I know.”

Those two words told me exactly how this was going to end, and now that I was on this rollercoaster, there was nothing I could do to stop it.

Part of me wanted to reach for him, to be close to him because I knew our time together was coming to an end. Even though the whispers were getting louder and the very people we wanted in the dark were finding out, I still desperately wanted to be in his arms, not arguing over the fact that he cared too much and had let it slip.

I just wished I could sit beside him without fear. That I could be with him in the daylight and not just as his secret at night. I wanted to be the one who cracked his heart open and received all the love I knew he would give to the right person.

But it would never happen.