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I bristled. What did he know of what I had endured over the years? We did not speak of my beatings. I never shared those details. Not with him. Not with anyone. He had never witnessed themeither. Never even asked about them. The closest we had come to discussing that part of my life—that verybigpart of my life—was the day he introduced me to the portraits of the others in the gallery. The ones like me. The day he told me that it would all end eventually and I would become someone else, someone with a life that belonged to me and me alone. At least it was supposed to have gone that way.

I shrugged free from his hands and put space between us. What did he know of my pain and discomfort? What did he know of the lord chamberlain panting in my ear as he brought the whip down on my back?

I’d buried those feelings, and now he dared to poke and prod at them, to expose them and drag them kicking and screaming out into the open. He cast light on them here in the dead of night in my bedchamber... on the eve of my wedding to the Beast of the Borderlands.

He continued in a hoarse voice, “You do this... and you will belong to him.”

Was that so different from now? I didn’t belong to myself here either.

I lifted my chin, steeling my resolve. “You should go. Now.”

A desperate look came over his face. “Wecan go. The two of us.Wecan leave before the rest of the palace wakes.”

I smiled, and it felt pained on my face. “The one thing I know about you, Stig... is that you always do what is right. You would never abandon your responsibilities for me. For anyone.”

“I would. For you.I will.”

“No,” I whispered with a slow shake of my head. “I won’t forsake my sisters. One of them will have to marry him if I don’t. I can’t let that happen.”

“Let it happen! It has always been their fate to marry for an alliance, to take a stranger for a husband. That istheirfate.” He stabbed a finger through the air at me. “Not yours.”

“And my fate has always been to protect them, to do whatever is asked of me in order to do that.”

He shook his head. “Not this.” Nodding to the armoire, he commanded, “Pack a bag. We will go.”

“We?”We.He would go with me? Run away with me as if we were two wanderers in the wind, troubadours or bards, free to do and go wherever we pleased.

It was impossible to fathom.

“Yes. I’ll take you away from here. Away from—”

“You can’t leave here.” I nodded at our surroundings. “You’re in this just as deep as I am. We have our duty.”

“Damn my duty and damn yours!”

I flinched. I’d never heard him like this. Never so angry. Not on my behalf. Not on behalf of anyone or anything. He was never this... intense.

“Running away together will destroy us both,” I insisted.

In the end, that would be the result. Who would we be but two people who deserted those who loved and relied on us? My sisters. My parents. Our country.

Stig had position and respect here, a shiny future with some highborn bride. How could I take him from that? He would come to resent me if I took him away from this world. Here, he was someone important. I would not let him sacrifice that for me.

“This isn’t you. You’re the most honorable person I know. The most responsible. People follow you because you’reyou. Not because you’re the captain of the guard. Not because you’re the lord regent’s son. You don’t run away from what’s important.”

Stig had been my champion for so long. He had always been there to make everything better, taking me for a ride or playing draughts with me or exploring the hidden passageways of the palace, entering through one room and popping out in another much to my delight.

“You’re right,” he agreed. “I don’t run away from what’s important.”

And he kissed me.

I didn’t close my eyes, too shocked at the warm press of his mouth. Stig’s mouth. On mine.

Stig. Me. Kissing.

I expelled a breath, and he swallowed it, taking it inside him. Stig, my closest friend, was kissing me.

His lips moved over mine. He kept space between us. His well-formed body was of similar height to mine. I didn’t have to angle my head, and he did not have to dip his lips. I lifted a hand, touched his cheek, fingers grazing over the silken pelt of his beard. It was pleasant, as comfortable as wrapping myself up in the weight of a familiar blanket.