You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

13
BRIDGET
THE NEXT FEW WEEKS WERE MISERABLE, NOT ONLY BECAUSE I WAS SICK
and heal­ing from my injuries, but because the lull in my pub­lic
sched­ule gave me plen­ty of time to freak out about Nikolai’s
abdi­ca­tion.
I was going to be queen. Maybe not tomor­row or a month from
now, but one day, and one day was far too soon.
I lift­ed my wine­glass to my lips and stared up at the night sky. It
was three weeks to the day since my con­ver­sa­tion with Niko­lai.
My con­cus­sion had healed, and I’d long since recov­ered from my
cold. I still had to be care­ful with my wrist, but oth­er­wise, I was up
and run­ning again, which meant I had to attend meet­ing after meet-
ing about how and when to announce the abdi­ca­tion, how to han­dle
the fall­out, plans for my per­ma­nent move back to Eldor­ra, and a mil-
lion oth­er things that made my head spin.
That morn­ing, my fam­i­ly, Markus, and I agreed on an offi­cial an-
nounce­ment a month from now. Or rather, every­one else agreed, and
I went along with it because I didn’t have a choice.
One month. One more month of free­dom, and that was it.
I was about to take anoth­er drink when the door to the rooftop
creaked open. I straight­ened, my mouth falling open when I saw
Rhys step out­side. Judg­ing by the way his eye­brows shot up, he was
as sur­prised to see me as I was him.
“What are you doing here?” we asked at the same time.
I huffed out a small laugh. “Mr. Larsen, this is my house. I should
be the only one ask­ing that ques­tion.”
“I didn’t think any­one came out here.” He took the seat next to
me, and I tried not to notice how good he smelled, like soap and
some­thing inde­scrib­ably Rhys. Clean, sim­ple, mas­cu­line.
We were on the rooftop of one of the palace’s north tow­ers, which
could only be accessed via the ser­vice hall­way near the kitchen.
Com­pared to the palace’s actu­al, ter­raced rooftop gar­den, it was
noth­ing, bare­ly big enough for the chairs I’d bribed a staff mem­ber
to help me bring up. But that was why I liked it. It was my secret
haven, the place I escaped to when I need­ed to think and be away
from pry­ing eyes.
I drained the rest of my wine and reached for the bot­tle at my
feet, only to real­ize it was emp­ty. I rarely drank so much, but I need-
ed some­thing to ease the anx­i­ety fol­low­ing me around like a black
cloud these days.
“Just me. Most peo­ple don’t know about this place,” I said. “How
did you find it?”
“I find every­thing.” Rhys smirked when I scrunched my nose at
his arro­gance. “I have the palace blue­prints, princess. I know every
nook and cran­ny of this place. It’s my—”
“Job,” I fin­ished. “I know. You don’t have to keep say­ing it.”
He’d said the same thing in Dr. Hausen’s office. I wasn’t sure
why it annoyed me so much. Maybe because, for a sec­ond, I
could’ve sworn his wor­ry for me went beyond his pro­fes­sion­al
oblig­a­tions. And maybe, for a sec­ond, I could’ve sworn I want­ed it
to. I want­ed him to care about me as me, not as his client.
Rhys’s lips quirked before his gaze trav­eled to my fore­head.
“How’s the bruise?”
“Fad­ing, thank the Lord.” It was now a pale yel­low­ish green. Still
unsight­ly, but bet­ter than the glar­ing pur­ple it used to be. “And it
doesn’t hurt so much any­more.”
“Good.” He brushed his fin­gers gen­tly over the bruise, and my
breath stut­tered. Rhys nev­er touched me unless he had to, but at that
moment, he didn’t have to. Which meant he want­ed to. “You got­ta be
more care­ful, princess.”
“You’ve said that already.”
“I’ll keep say­ing it until you get it in your head.”
“Trust me. It’s in my head. How can it not be when you keep
nag­ging me?”
Despite my grum­bles, I found a strange com­fort in his nag­ging.
In a world where every­thing else was chang­ing, Rhys remained
won­der­ful­ly, unre­lent­ing­ly him, and I nev­er want­ed that to change.
His hand lin­gered on my fore­head for anoth­er moment before he
dropped it and pulled away, and oxy­gen returned to my lungs.
“So.” Rhys leaned back and laced his fin­gers behind his head. He
didn’t look at me as he asked, “Who do you usu­al­ly bring up here?”
“What?” I cocked my head, con­fused. I nev­er brought any­one up
here.
“Two chairs.” He nod­ded at mine, then the one he was sit­ting in.
“Who’s the sec­ond one for?” His tone was casu­al, but a tight cur­rent
ran beneath it.
“No one. There are two chairs because…” I fal­tered. “I don’t
know. I guess I hoped I’d find some­one I want­ed to bring up here
one day.” I had sil­ly, roman­tic notions of me and mys­tery guy sneak-
ing up here to kiss and laugh and talk all night, but the chances of
that were grow­ing slim­mer by the minute.
“Hmm.” Rhys was silent for a sec­ond before he said, “You want
me to leave?”
“What?” I sound­ed like a bro­ken record.
Maybe the hit to my head had scram­bled my brains because I’d
nev­er been this inar­tic­u­late.
“Seems like this is your secret spot. Didn’t real­ize I was intrud­ing
when I came up here,” he said gruffly.
Some­thing warm cas­cad­ed through my stom­ach. “You’re not in-
trud­ing,” I said. “Stay. Please. I could use the com­pa­ny.”
“Okay.”
And that was that.
I couldn’t hold back a smile. I didn’t think I would enjoy shar­ing
this space with any­one else, but I liked hav­ing Rhys here with me.
He didn’t feel the need to fill the silence with unnec­es­sary small talk,
and his pres­ence com­fort­ed me, even if he irri­tat­ed me, too. When he
was near, I was safe.
I stretched my legs out and acci­den­tal­ly knocked over the emp­ty
wine bot­tle, which rolled across the floor toward Rhys. I bent to pick
it up at the same time he did, and our fin­gers brushed for a sec­ond.
No, not even a sec­ond. A mil­lisec­ond. But it was enough to send
elec­tric­i­ty siz­zling up my arm and down my spine.
I yanked my hand away, my skin hot, as he picked up the bot­tle
and placed it on the oth­er side of his chair, away from both our legs.
Our brief touch felt inde­cent, like we were doing some­thing we
weren’t sup­posed to do. Which was ridicu­lous. We hadn’t even
planned it. It was an acci­dent.
You’re over­think­ing.
The clouds shift­ed, unblock­ing part of the moon, and light spilled
across the tow­er, illu­mi­nat­ing part of Rhys’s face. It appeared grim-
mer than it had a moment ago.
Even so, he was beau­ti­ful. Not in a per­fect, Greek god sculp­ture
kind of way, but in a pure, unabashed­ly mas­cu­line way. The dark
stub­ble, the small scar slash­ing through his eye­brow, the gun­metal
eyes…
My stom­ach did a slow roll as I strug­gled not to focus on how
alone we were up here. We could do any­thing, and no one would
know.
No one except us.
“Heard we’re leav­ing next week,” Rhys said. I might’ve imag-
ined it, but I thought he sound­ed strained, like he, too, was fight­ing
back some­thing he couldn’t quite con­trol.
“Yes.” I hoped my voice didn’t come across as shaky as it did to
my own ears. “My grandfather’s con­di­tion is steady for now, and I
need to wrap up my affairs in New York before I move back.”
I real­ized my mis­take before the words ful­ly left my mouth.
I hadn’t told Rhys about Nikolai’s abdi­ca­tion yet, which meant
he didn’t know about my plans to move back to Athen­berg.
Per­ma­nent­ly.
Rhys stilled. “Move back?” He sound­ed calm, but the storm
brew­ing in his eyes was any­thing but. “Here?”
I swal­lowed hard. “Yes.”
“You didn’t men­tion that, princess.” Still calm, still dan­ger­ous,
like the eye of a hur­ri­cane. “Seems like an impor­tant thing for me to
know.”
“It’s not final­ized, but that’s the plan. I…want to be clos­er to my
grand­fa­ther.” That was part­ly true. He’d recov­ered nice­ly from his
hos­pi­tal vis­it and he had peo­ple mon­i­tor­ing him around the clock,
but I still wor­ried about him and want­ed to be close by should any-
thing hap­pen. How­ev­er, as crown princess, I was also required to re-
turn to Athen­berg for my queen train­ing. I was already behind by
decades.
Rhys’s nos­trils flared. “When were you plan­ning to tell me this?”
“Soon,” I whis­pered.
The palace was keep­ing Nikolai’s abdi­ca­tion under tight wraps,
and I wasn’t sup­posed to talk about it until clos­er to the offi­cial an-
nounce­ment. I could’ve told Rhys I was mov­ing back to Eldor­ra ear-
lier using the excuse I just gave him, but I’d want­ed to pre­tend
every­thing was nor­mal for a while longer.
It was stu­pid, but my mind had been all over the place late­ly, and
I couldn’t make sense of my own actions.
Some­thing flick­ered in Rhys’s eyes. If I didn’t know bet­ter, I
would think he was hurt. “Well, now you can final­ly be rid of me,”
he said light­ly, but his face might as well have been etched from
stone. “I’ll talk to my boss on Mon­day, get the paper­work start­ed for
the tran­si­tion.”
Tran­si­tion.
My breath, my heart. Every­thing stopped. “You’re resign­ing?”
“You don’t need me here. You have the Roy­al Guard. I resign, or
the palace releas­es me from my con­tract. Same end­ing.”
The thought hadn’t crossed my mind, but it made sense. The
palace had hired Rhys because they hadn’t want­ed to pull any Roy­al
Guard mem­bers away from their fam­i­ly when I was liv­ing in the
U.S. Now that I was mov­ing back, they didn’t need a con­trac­tor.
“But I…” I do need you.
Rhys and I may not have got­ten along in the begin­ning, but now,
I couldn’t imag­ine not hav­ing him by my side.
The kid­nap­ping. Grad­u­a­tion. My grandfather’s hos­pi­tal­iza­tion.
Dozens of trips, hun­dreds of events, thou­sands of tiny moments like
the time he’d ordered me chick­en soup when I was sick or when
he’d lent me his jack­et after I left mine at home.
He’d been with me through it all.
“So, that’s it.” I blinked away the ache behind my eyes. “We have
one more month and then you’ll just…leave.”
Rhys’s eyes dark­ened to a near black, and a mus­cle jumped in his
jaw. “Don’t wor­ry, princess. Maybe you’ll get Booth as your body-
guard again. It’ll be like old times for you two.”
I was sud­den­ly, irra­tional­ly angry. At him, his dis­mis­sive tone,
the entire sit­u­a­tion.