Page 14 of Contested Crown

“What? He didn’t find the safe house you deliberately hid from him, so he doesn’t love you?” Cade turned the page. “I think we both know that Declan is a self-involved asshole. Why is that surprising?”

“It’s sloppy,” I said, looking around, just in case I had missed something. “Declan is selfish, but he’s not sloppy. You don’t get to beDeclan Monroeif you’re careless.”

Cade stared at me for a long moment, then turned back to the book, one of his fingers tracing over the page.

“Unless… Unless he already had other things on his mind when I set this place up.” I frowned, my brows twitching together as I considered the possibilities. What if Declan hadn’t cared because he’d been too busy with whatever plot he and Leon were putting together?

My final glance didn’t reveal anything else, and I went back to the tool chest, grabbing a couple of rags from the bottom drawer. I threw one at Cade, and it hit his chest before landing on the book in his lap. Pinching it between his fingers, he tossed it at me.

I caught it with one hand and lobbed it back. “I get that you’re used to having servants literally flush the toilet behind you, but here at Château Miles, wearethe help. Get to dusting unless you want to have dust bunnies take up residence in your lungs.”

With a huff, Cade put the book aside and began wiping off the coffee table. The unit was small; I’d kept enough space clear for a car, so everything else was squeezed into half of the room. The couch was along the back wall, and the bookshelf was nestled in the corner. There was a small kitchen table toward the front and shelving full of canned foods and paper plates on the wall opposite the car. The unit was equipped with a working sink and a small bathroom, but I had stocked up on bottled water anyway.

Cade finished with the table and wandered back to the bookshelf, dusting off the shelves at eye height. He picked another volume up. “Toni Morrison.”

“I contain multitudes,” I said.

Slipping the book back on the shelf, Cade said, “Apparently.”

I cleaned the small table and began dusting off the canned food, checking expiration dates while I was moving cans around. Everything should still be good, but there was no reason to get food poisoning because of carelessness.

Cade had stopped moving around, and I turned to give him a hard time when I saw him staring at my duffel bag. He’d opened it and taken out the newspaper. I winced.

Coming over, I looked at the headline again.House Bartlett Crowns Its King.

“It should have been you,” I said.

With a bark of laughter, Cade said, “No. It was never going to be me. I could have been the perfect prince, the perfect mage, and he was never going to let me be king.”

The bitterness in his voice was a raw wound, inflamed and seeping pus. I blinked, my eyebrows going up.

“You’re mad,” I said.

For weeks, Cade had let me drag him around, following my plans, complaining but not expressing anything more than disgust at the accommodations. If he was angry about losing his throne, losing his position, he’d masked it under layers of jaded disinterest.

“Of course I’m mad,” Cade snapped. “The only two people I trusted were working against me. Leon killed my parents. He spent eleven years working to undermine me, all while convincing me it was for my own best interests.”

“So you’re ready to fight for your throne,” I said.

“I’m…” Cade’s shoulders slumped. He looked at the picture again. “How regal. He looks the part. Petrona once told me that he’d been positioned to be king before my father was born. The strongest mage of his generation. I thought she meant that I should learn from him. That he must have things to teach me.”

“You think she was warning you?” I dropped the rag on the table and wiped my hand on my jeans. Then, tentatively, I reached out and clasped Cade’s shoulder.

“I think that she saw the entire chessboard,” Cade said. “Who knows what she was doing?”

“You’re allowed to be mad and hurt,” I said.

“Thank you for your permission,” Cade snapped, but he turned his head, leaning against my arm.

Hesitantly, I tugged him close, wrapping him in a hug. “Cade, he took something from you, something you didn’t ever know if youwanted, but it was something that was yours. He betrayed you.”

Cade held himself tense, not moving as I stroked my hand up his back. Then, incrementally, he began to tremble, each muscle jumping as he gasped into my shirt. He brought his arms up, wrapping them around my back and digging his fingers in.

“How could he?” he asked, his voice snotty and torn. “How could hedothat to me? I thought he… loved me.”

I understood the hesitation on the word. It was impossible after so much loss to truly believe that anyone loved you, to truly believe that you were worthy of the affection that people showed you.

I never would have said that I thought Declan loved me, but I had to admit I was hurt by how fast he ordered my execution.