Page 115 of Reign

“I’m sorry, but I can’t go back,” she breathed.

Marshall went still. Hurt flickered over his eyes as he asked, “Is there someone else?”

Liam popped into her mind—Liam, who would show up at the palace in a couple of hours, ready to help however Sam needed.

Liam, whom she couldn’t even kiss without thinking of Marshall.

“There has only ever been you, Marshall,” she said truthfully. “But I don’t know where we go from here.”

The fabric of her bridesmaid dress felt itchy and hot. Samwished they were somewhere else—anywhere but the stifling confines of the palace, a place that felt less like home than it ever had.

“I have no idea what to say.” Marshall’s voice was raw. “I missed you so much while you were gone. Every night I would lie awake in bed, thinking about you, wondering if you were okay.”

Sam lifted her chin stubbornly. “Then why didn’t you call more? I missed you, too, Marshall. As glad as I was that you were happy in Hawaii, I felt isolated and lonely here. I worry that we’ve been living separate lives, drifting apart.”

“I wanted to give you space! All I do is cause problems for you: with your family, with the media…”

“Those problems were caused by both of us, and I thought we were facing them together.” A tear streaked down her cheek, ruining her camera-ready makeup.

“What do we do now?” Marshall asked.

“If I liked you less, I would say we should just keep trying, see how it goes. But, Marshall…I love you too much for that.” She swallowed. “I love you so much that I think we owe it to ourselves to figure out what makes sense.”

Marshall looked stricken. “That sounds a lot like a breakup, Sam.”

The distance between them hurt like a physical thing. They used to lie intertwined together, skin to skin, and now Sam had thrown up an invisible wall between them and they couldn’t even touch. He was standing right before her, yet he might as well still be five thousand miles away in Hawaii.

“I don’t want to break up, but I can’t go back to Hawaii as if nothing has happened. My time here has changed me. Losing my titles, living as a nonroyal person…It’s all made me rethink things. I’m not the same girl you fell in love with.”

His hands clenched into fists at his sides, as if he wasforcibly restraining himself from reaching for her, but he nodded. “Maybe you’ve changed, but I haven’t. I still want the same thing I thought we both wanted. A life together, far from all of this.”

“I’m sorry,” she told him, because what else was there tosay?

Marshall looked utterly destroyed as he turned and walked away, his footfalls echoing down the hall.

Sam stood there for several long minutes, watching him. She wanted to scream and cry at once; her heart was thumping erratically in her chest, yet she stood there like a statue, saying nothing.

“Sam, thank god! I’ve been looking for you. I asked Beatrice where you were, and she said you’d gone to see Daphne—”

Jeff ran up to join her, then fell silent at the look on her face. “Oh my god, did something happen? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she lied, dabbing at her eyes.

Her brother clearly didn’t believe her, but let it go. “Can we talk?” he asked hoarsely. “I need your help with something.”

She sniffed. “Of course. What is it?”

“I need to call off the wedding.”

At first Sam thought she hadn’t heard him correctly. She just stared at him, wondering if this was some kind of prank, but the bleak truth of it was written there on his face.

“Okay, you obviously need to talk to Daphne.”

“Right,” Jeff said, though he looked a little queasy at the thought.

Sam glanced at the enormous grandfather clock near the entrance to the Weapons Room. Unbelievably, its spindly metal hands still told the time. “I was supposed to meet Daphne and Beatrice in the orchard soon for bridesmaid photos, which means that Daphne is probably on her way there. I think she was doing solo portraits first.”

She grabbed her brother by the sleeve and began to draghim through the warren of downstairs hallways, past the utter chaos reigning in the kitchens, until they threw open the back door.