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Her smile faded, but not from fear this time, as she thought about it.

“A life.”

“What kind?”

“I don’t know if it sounds foolish.”

“Try me.”

“I want to open a door without wondering whether I’m allowed through it.”

She shifted on her feet.

“I want to wake up and decide where I’m going that day. Walk outside without guards following me. Read whatever I want instead of whatever Father approves. Learn something simply because it interests me. I want to go somewhere I’ve never been and stay because I like it—or leave because I don’t.”

She lifted those pale blue eyes to mine.

“I want to find out who I am when no one owns me.”

Christ.

A princess’s daughter, and she wasn’t asking for castles, jewels, money, or revenge. She wanted to choose a fucking book, open her own door, and walk down a street because she felt like it—freedoms I’d never once thought to value because no one had ever taken them from me.

“You’ll have all of it.”

She studied me. “You can’t know that.”

“I know I’m getting you out of here. The rest will be yours to decide.”

“You sound very certain.”

“I am.”

“And if Father comes after me?”

“He will.”

That answer startled her.

I wasn’t going to insult her with a pretty lie.

“Ciro doesn’t strike me as a man who gives up something he thinks belongs to him. But wanting you back and getting you back are two very different things.”

“What if he offers your people something they want?”

“He doesn’t have anything worth more than my word.”

Her eyes searched mine.

“And you’ve already given me that,” she said.

“Aye.”

Something fragile moved across her face. Hope, maybe, but she still seemed afraid to trust it. She’d spent a lifetime learning that promises from powerful men usually came with locks attached.

Mine wouldn’t.

“My people will understand what you did here.”