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“You said you’ve waited so long.”

He frowns, but he nods.

“Ididn’t make you wait,” I say.

He’s frozen in place for the longest time, his jaw tight as he regards me. He’s the brother to the king. He can’t make promises or declarations. Iknowhe can’t.

My cheeks are hot again, but I hold his gaze. “I don’t deserve to be treated like a secret, Corrick.”

A muscle in his jaw twitches. I wish he would say something. I wish he woulddosomething.

“Forgive me,” he finally says, and his voice is as proper and courtly as I’ve ever heard it. “That wasn’t my intent.”

I know, I want to say, but I don’t know. Just like with the man in the candy shop, or with Lochlan’s presence on this ship, Idon’tknow. Not for sure.

So I curtsy just as formally, as if I weren’t just drowning in the taste of his mouth. “Thank you, Your Highness.”

That hits him like a dart. I can almost see the impact. He takes a step back and gives me a nod. “I bid you a pleasant evening, Miss Cade.”

That hitsmelike a dagger. My throat swells and my eyes blur, and I have to turn on my heel and stride for the door.

Just as I open it, I hear his voice, soft and beseeching. “Tessa.”

But the door is already open, Rocco and Kilbourne both standing at attention in the hall.

I don’t look at either of them. I allow the door to fall closed behind me, and I step across the corridor to close myself alone in the last remaining room.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Corrick

I honestly hadn’t thought things could get worse.

I want to go after her, but I don’t know what would undo this. A profession of love? A plea for forgiveness? Offering the kingdom on a string?

I’m not even sure she’d want any of that. It’s not even my kingdom to offer. It’s my brother’s. And right now, Kandala is no prize. I might as well offer her a hornet’s nest.

I wish I knew what Lochlan said to her. Right this instant, I want to do everything I said I would do to him.

Her words to me keep echoing in my thoughts.

Ididn’t make you wait.

No. She didn’t.

The worst part is that she didn’t say the words with censure. She said them with … withunderstanding. She knows who I am. She knows my role. She knows that any promises come with the weight of the crown behind them.

She also knows who I’ve spent the last four years being. The King’s Justice. One of the most feared men in the entire country.

She didn’t say it, but she didn’t have to. I heard it in her voice when she asked about my intentions for Lochlan. When I took hold of her arm, she almost flinched.

I need to focus. I have duties here. An obligation to my king and my country. I shouldn’t have marched into this room and started …that.

But as I walked onto the ship, I kept thinking about the way Captain Blakemore invited her aboard ahead of my arrival, or the way he told her to call him by his given name at dinner. I kept thinking of his words about loyalty and honor and duty, and how his comments made my efforts to protect Kandala feel misguided and ineffective.

I kept hearing her voice from the moment he appeared in the dining room.Oh.

It’s far too similar to the way she said the very same word when my fingers found the lacing to her—