Chap­ter 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 meet­ing about how and when to announce the abdi­ca­tion, how to han­dle the fall­out, plans for my per­ma­nent move back to Eldor­ra, and a mil­lion oth­er things that made my head spin.

That morn­ing, my fam­i­ly, Markus, and I agreed on an offi­cial announce­ment 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 need­ed 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 sneak­ing 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 intrud­ing,” 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 grim­mer 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 imag­ined 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 any­thing hap­pen. How­ev­er, as crown princess, I was also required to return 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 announce­ment. I could’ve told Rhys I was mov­ing back to Eldor­ra ear­li­er 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 body­guard again. It’ll be like old times for you two.”

I was sud­den­ly, irra­tional­ly angry. At him, his dis­mis­sive tone, the entire sit­u­a­tion.