Her mouth pinched, but she conceded with a reluctant, “Yes, Your Highness.”
She was a master at choosing which battles to fight, and apparently, this one wasn’t worth fighting.
She disappeared up the stairs, leaving me alone with Rhys.
He sat in the corner, staring at the flames in the hearth with a brooding expression. Whatever was bothering him, it wasn’t us and what happened in the parking lot of the Royal Botanic Gardens. It was something else. He’d been moodier than usual since the trip started.
“Penny for your thoughts,” I said. We’d barely talked the entire trip, unless good morning and good night counted as talking.
Rhys finally looked at me. The firelight flickered over his face, casting dancing shadows over his strong jaw and chiseled cheekbones
“You seem happy,” he said. “Far happier than I’ve seen you at those fancy parties you go to in Athenberg.”
He noticed. Of course he had. He was the most observant man I’d ever met.
“I love it,” I admitted. “Meeting people, hearing their concerns, having something concrete to contribute at my next meeting with the Speaker. I feel like I can finally do something meaningful. Like I have a purpose in life.”
That was one thing that had bugged me so much about being a princess. Yes, the monarchy was symbolic, but I didn’t want to spend my life just smiling for the cameras and giving lifestyle interviews. I wanted something more.
But maybe I’d been thinking about my role all wrong. Maybe, instead of conforming to what being the crown princess had always meant, I could shape it into what I wanted it to be.
A small smile touched Rhys’s lips. “I always knew you would make a great queen.”
“I’m not queen yet.”
“You don’t need a crown to be queen, princess.”
The words slid over my skin, leaving a trail of tingles in their wake. I let myself soak them in for a minute before I changed the subject, painfully aware of who and what we were.
No tingles allowed.
“Are you enjoying the trip?” I asked. “It’s nice to be out of the city.”
His smile faded. “It’s fine.”
“Just fine?” Perhaps I was biased, but Eldorra was beautiful, and we’d visited some of the country’s most stunning regions.
He lifted those broad shoulders in a half shrug. “I’m not the biggest fan of Eldorra. Almost didn’t take this job so I wouldn’t have to visit.”
“Oh.” I tried not to take offense. I failed. “Why not?”
Eldorra was like Switzerland or Australia. Not everyone loved it, but no one hated it.
The silence stretched for several long beats before Rhys replied.
“My father was Eldorran,” he said, his voice flat and emotionless. “He promised my mother he would bring her here and they’d live happily ever after. She never quite gave up on that dream, even after he left and it became clear he wasn’t coming back. She kept talking about Eldorra, how she was going to leave our shit town and move here. She had postcards and magazine articles about the place all over the house. That was all I heard growing up. Eldorra, Eldorra, Eldorra. She loved the fantasy of the country more than she did me, and I grew to hate it. It became a symbol of everything wrong with my childhood. Still, I might’ve gotten over my hang-up eventually, but…”
Rhys’s hand clenched and unclenched around his knee. “One of my last deployments was a joint mission. Both the U.S. and Eldorra had agents who’d been caught by the terrorist group they were tracking, and we were supposed to retrieve them. For diplomatic reasons, we had to keep our mission under wraps, which meant no air support. We were deep in hostile territory, outnumbered and outgunned. Our biggest advantage was the element of surprise.”
Cold foreboding trickled down my back.
“The night of the mission, one of the Eldorran soldiers—a brash, hotheaded type—strayed from the plan. We’d clashed from the beginning, and he hated we were using my plan instead of his.” Rhys’s expression was bleak. “Instead of waiting for my signal like we agreed upon, he fired when he saw one of the group leaders leave the compound. The one in charge of torturing the prisoners, according to our intel. It was a high-profile kill…but it hadn’t been our priority, and it gave away our location. Everything went to shit after that. We were swarmed, and out of the eight men in my squad, three survived. The agents didn’t make it out alive, either. It was a total fucking bloodbath.”
His words tripped something in my memory. A unit of Eldorran soldiers had all been wiped out in a joint mission gone wrong a few years ago. It had received nonstop news coverage for a week, and I bet it was the same mission Rhys was talking about.
Horror and sympathy gripped my chest. “I’m so sorry.”
I should be loyal to Eldorra, and I was, but loyalty didn’t mean blindness. Everyone messed up, and in Rhys’s case, the soldier’s mistake had cost him the lives of those he loved.
“Don’t be. It’s not your fault.” Rhys rubbed a hand over his face. “It happened years ago, and yeah, it added to my huge fucking hang-ups about Eldorra, but what’s past is past. Can’t do a damn thing about it now.”
We fell silent again, each lost in our own thoughts, before I worked up the courage to ask, “Why did you take the job as my bodyguard then? If you knew it meant having to visit Eldorra.”
Rhys’s expression relaxed into a smirk. “You got a real pretty face.” His smirk widened at my exasperated huff. “I don’t know. Guess it felt right at the time.”
“We always end up where we’re meant to be,” I said softly.
His eyes lingered on mine. “Maybe.”
He hated Eldorra, yet he’d not only taken the job but moved here permanently. For me.
“Well.” I forced a smile, hardly able to hear myself over the roar of my heart. “I should turn in for the night. Early morning tomorrow.”
Rhys rose when I did. “I’ll walk you to your room.”
The soft creak of the wooden stairs beneath our feet mingled with the sounds of our breaths—mine shallow, Rhys’s deep and even.
Did he feel it, the electric current running between us? Or was it only in my imagination?
Perhaps not, because when we arrived at my room, I didn’t open the door, and he didn’t leave.
Goosebumps peppered my flesh, either from Rhys’s proximity or from the air-conditioning blasting through the hall.
Even when you’re not there, you’re everywhere. In my head, in my lungs, in my fucking soul.
His confession from the parking lot echoed in my head. We hadn’t talked about that night since, but maybe we didn’t need words.
Rhys’s eyes dipped to my breasts. I followed his gaze and noticed for the first time just how thin my blouse was. I wore a lace bra, but my nipples were so hard they showed clearly through the two layers of flimsy material.
I should leave, but Rhys’s molten gaze pinned me in place, erasing my earlier chill and leaving a deep, fiery ache in its wake.
“You know what you said earlier? About how we always end up where we’re meant to be?” He grazed his hand over the side of my neck, and my heart thudded so hard against my ribcage I half expected it to leap out of my chest and into his arms.