Page 42

Luc

I sprang out of the bed, grabbing my clothes.

“I’ll get it!” Ava whispered, her eyes wide with panic. “Just stay in there!” She pointed toward the bathroom. I nodded, hurrying inside and wasting not a second putting on my clothes. It didn’t take me long to get dressed, and by the time I was stepping into my pants I could hear Ava making her way toward the door.

“Let me in, Ava!” Alaric was mad.

“Hold on !”

The door opened.

“What the hell is going on?” Alaric asked. “Is there a reason why there’s a ball happening downstairs and you’re not present? People are starting to ask questions.”

My stomach tensed. I didn’t like where this was going.

“I needed a little time to myself. I’m doing my best down there, but it’s just a little overwhelming, you know?”

“You’ve been gone for over thirty minutes. That is totally unacceptable during an event like this.”

“I can’t have a little time to myself?”

“No, you may not! Especially on a night like tonight! This evening is about presenting you to the kingdom, of letting the most important and powerful people in Edoria get to know the woman that will one day be their queen. It is absolutely unacceptable that you duck away for any reason.”

“OK, first of all, don’t talk to me like that.”

“Hold on.” Alaric’s tone was quieter, as if something had occurred to him.

Oh no .

A few beats of silence passed.

“Why is your hair mussed? And your shoes are off.”

Alaric could be a stiff, but he sure as hell wasn’t stupid. The longer this conversation went on, the more certain I was that our secret wasn’t going to be hidden for much longer.

“I was lying down. I took my shoes off because they hurt! You want to spend two hours in brand new high heels? Be my guest!”

More silence.

“Where is he?”

“What?”

“Don’t play stupid with me, girl. I know what you were doing up here. The only questions are who were you doing it with and where is he?”

“What the hell are you talking about? There’s no one here.”

“It’s one thing to look me in the eye and lie, it’s another to try and convince me I don’t know what is right in front of me! Now, tell me who he is and where he is.”

I wasn’t about to stand there and let Ava lie, take the heat, for what we’d both done. It was time to stop the deceit, to come forward, whatever the cost.

I placed my hand on the doorknob and turned it, understanding that my life was about to change forever.

With a push of the door, I entered the bedroom. Alaric was standing in front of his daughter with an expression of pure anger on his face. He turned to me, the anger shifting to confusion. He cocked his head to the side, as if unable to process what he was seeing.

“Luc? What is going on here?”

Ava’s expression fell, and in that instant, I could sense that she understood that the lies were over.

“Alaric. You wanted to see the man who was with your daughter. Here I am.”

The confused look stayed on his face.

“Here you are? I do not understand. Why are you here in my daughter’s room?”

He’d been on the warpath, ready to tear the arms off anyone who looked at him the wrong way. Now that he was face-to-face with the truth, he didn’t seem to be able to process it.

I was going to have to be very clear, and not leave a bit of doubt. It all had to be put on the table right then and there.

“I’m in your daughter’s room because we’ve been seeing one another.”

Ava pursed her lips and looked directly at Alaric. He didn’t say a word, just kept looking back and forth between the two of us.

“He’s right. That’s what was going on. I’m sorry you had to find out this way.”

Alaric still said nothing, his finger moving through the air as if he were silently putting all of the evidence together.

“You and my daughter,” he said finally. “Were… intimate?”

“That’s right.”

He nodded slowly. “I see. I see.”

I watched his hands ball into tight fists. Before I could process what was happening, he strode over to me, raising his fist and swinging it in my direction. I was a trained fighter—it was part of being the king’s closest aide and protector. My instinct was to step away, or to even grab his fist and pull his arm, placing Alaric into an armbar.

I didn’t. Instead, I stood still and let his fist fly toward me, connecting with my cheek. Ava let out a scream as her father struck me, the blow sending me stumbling backward against the dresser. Pain rang out, first from my face, then from my lower back as I hit the solid brass drawer pull.

Alaric marched toward me, preparing to strike again. He pulled back his fist and swung just as I shot my hands up, grabbing onto his arm and moving him away, putting some distance between us.

“Stop this!”

Ava’s words knocked some sense into Alaric. Instead of the king going in for another strike, he stood firm, his eyes burning with rage. I touched my face, feeling the warm, swollen spot where he’d hit me. No doubt I’d have a black eye from that. However, I had more important matters to deal with at that moment.

Alaric continued to glare at me with a cold and hateful stare. Finally, he pointed in my direction and said, “You… you snake . You untrustworthy, duplicitous liar . How the hell could I have been so stupid as to allow someone like you get close to my daughter, someone who had no shame taking the princess of his nation to bed like some common club girl?”

“Alaric…”

“No, don’t you Alaric me. All this time you were here, you’ve been scheming behind my back to bed her! I do not even know what to say to this kind of betrayal.”

“This wasn’t a matter of taking her to bed,” I replied. “And there was no scheming. What happened between your daughter and me was the result of the two of us spending time together, getting to know one another. What happened between us happened because we developed real and true feelings for each other.”

“Bah!” Alaric swiped his hand through the air, dismissing the idea as ridiculous. “Feelings!”

“It’s true!” Ava said. “I was with Luc because I wanted to be—I wasn’t tricked or seduced. He was a kind and perfect gentleman.”

I narrowed my eyes, a surprising flash of rage welling within.

“Maybe, old friend, if you’d bothered getting to know your daughter over this last month and a half instead of spending the time holed up in your office barking orders at her, you’d have connected with her as well!”

“A snake,” Alaric said. “Nothing more than a snake.”

Might as well get it all out in the open now.

“I’ve done what I had to do to help the people close to you deal with your bullshit,” I said.

Alaric cocked his head to the side, confused.

“What does that mean?”

“Analise. Did you ever wonder how she managed to sneak out of the palace with Ava without you knowing? How she managed to make it to the U.S.? It was because of me .”

“What?”

“For how long did you think she’d put up with your philandering ways? And for how long did you think I’d be able to stand aside and watch you treat a wonderful woman like her as if she were nothing more than total trash?”

Alaric began to understand, his expression forming into one of anger again.

“Then you’ve always been a snake.”

Ava watched with wide eyes, understanding that this was a confrontation that’d been years in the making.

“I did what needed to be done. I helped Analise escape from you, and I was there for your daughter when you refused to do anything but scold her for not being the perfect little princess you had in mind. I have no regrets, not one.”

For a moment, it looked as if Alaric might leap across the room and rip me to shreds.

He didn’t, however. Maybe his anger was so intense that he couldn’t even think of what to say or do next. Or maybe he couldn’t deny that there was truth to what I was saying.

“Leave,” he said. “You have one hour to gather your things and go. I never want to see you in this palace again.”

“Alaric—”

He shook his head.

“It’s done. One more word and I will banish you from the kingdom itself.”

“No,” Ava said. “You can’t.”

“I can and I will. Now go.”

There was nothing else to be said. After one more look at Ava, I walked out of the room.