Chapter 26 #2
The rhythmic croaking of frogs fills the air, and mist hangs heavy over the water as the moon reflects in the pond. As crickets chirp to each other, I can see why Wulfric would choose to live here. It’s peaceful. Calm. Something I’ve rarely experienced in my life.
Most of the calm in my life has come from Freya.
“Are you hoping to catch your death?” a soft voice says behind me.
I don’t turn around, even if my heart kicks up a notch at the sound of Freya’s worry-laden words. “Nah. I’m pretty good at surviving.”
“It is freezing out here, Elliot.” Before I can respond, she tucks a blanket over my shoulders. “I refused to lose you in the forest, and I will not do so now.”
Lose me. She can never have me. “You shouldn’t be out here, Rapunzel,” I mutter, pulling the blanket tighter around me. It is cold, and I lost enough blood that my body isn’t doing a great job of keeping me warm.
Freya comes to my side, her arm pressed to mine.
Behind her, two guards stand with their backs to us and at a far enough distance that they’re unlikely to hear our conversation.
If I were anyone else, I doubt they would take their eyes off the princess after what happened today, but I’m grateful for the privacy they’re giving us for now.
Freya leans a little more heavily against me. “I do believe I am not obligated to take any order from you unless my safety is at stake.”
“You wouldn’t listen even if it was.”
“How are you feeling?”
Sighing, I turn to face her, planning to tell her I’m perfectly fine and we should get ready to leave.
But at the sight of her hair spilling over her shoulders in the moonlight, my heart throbs in my chest and leaves my resolve feeling slippery.
I don’t want to leave this place. Leaving means riding the rest of the way through the pass, which sounds exhausting and painful, and facing reality as soon as we get to the town on the other side where the royal vehicles are waiting for us.
I would so much rather stay in this little guard-surrounded bubble and pretend we’re alone again, like we were before.
“Sit down,” I say, adjusting the blanket to free my arms.
Freya frowns. “What?”
Pointing at a log near her feet, I repeat my command with raised eyebrows. “Please,” I add when she gapes at me.
“I will remind you about orders.” But she does sit, wrapping her arms around her knees. She’s wearing a jacket that was probably supplied to her by one of the guards, but I don’t miss the shiver that runs through her.
Slipping the blanket from my shoulders, I drape it around her and speak over her when she tries to protest. “Take it, Freya. I need my hands free for this.”
“For what, exactly?”
Instead of answering, I slide my fingers into her hair and start pulling it away from her face.
It’s been a few months since I last braided the girls’ hair, and neither of them had quite this much.
But Freya needs someone to help her tame her waves, and Runa isn’t here.
I wasn’t much help to the princess after leaving the arena, but I can be useful now.
“It is still hard to believe you are as skilled with hair as you are with everything else,” Freya murmurs as I take pieces of her hair on one side of her part to do a Dutch braid.
“No one said I was skilled.”
The frogs continue their song as I work, helping fill the silence between us.
I don’t mind that we aren’t talking. Freya’s hair is not only long but thick, and it’s taking all of my concentration to weave it into something that will last longer than a few minutes without any pins to hold it in place.
I’m hoping for a functional braid crown, something to last until we meet up with the rest of the staff.
Freya sits with the blanket tucked around her, her arms hugging her legs, and she looks like a regular human this way instead of a princess who never lets anything get to her.
I wish I could see her face and have a chance at guessing what she might be thinking about, but since my whole focus is on the back of her head, I start replaying some of the things she said last night.
She was full of compliments, and frankly I might have dreamed up half of them in my wounded delirium, but I was still conscious for one thing in particular: You could be royal material.
Freya isn’t one to lie. But does she really think I could be…enough?
My fingers grow still on her scalp, and Freya tilts her head back to look at me. “Elliot?”
Unable to resist, I brush a finger along her temple, then resume my braiding, working more quickly now that I’ve finished braiding across the front of her head.
I just need to work the rest of her hair into the braid I’ve already done and hope that it stays in place.
“I said a lot of things last night,” I mutter.
“Things I probably wouldn’t have said if I hadn’t been shot. ”
“So did I. Do you regret anything?”
“It’s hard to regret being honest.” And I will never regret that kiss. I shouldn’t have done it, but her request felt enough like an order that my body overtook my brain and obeyed. If not for the holes in my side, I’m not sure I would have stopped kissing her once I started.
Finished with the last of the braid, I tuck the end into the crown and settle on the log, facing the opposite direction from the princess but pressed up against her side. “Do you? Regret anything, I mean.”
After admiring my handiwork by tilting her head from one side to the other and patting the front of the crown with her hand, she takes one end of the blanket and holds it out to me. It’s an awkward way to share, facing the wrong way, but I’ll take the warmth however I can get it.
“I cannot regret saying what I feel,” she says, her voice as soft as the breeze around us. “And you…” Her hand lifts to my chest, cold fingers splaying across my skin. “You make me question everything I thought I knew, Elliot Reid.”
“That sounds like a terrible thing to do.” Kissing her would be equally terrible, but that doesn’t mean I’m not tempted. Close as we are and relatively on our own, now could be my only chance to taste her again.
Freya smiles. “Or the best thing.” Is she talking about making her question things or kissing? “I always thought I knew what I wanted.”
“But?” As a chill shudders through me when the breeze picks up, I lean closer to her, as much for warmth as from simple desire.
She lowers her forehead onto my bare shoulder and sighs. “But I did not realize there were other choices I could make.” She shivers.
Cursing under my breath, I ignore the pain in my side as I straddle the log, and then I pull her close, tucking her legs over mine and wrapping my arms around her beneath the blanket.
“You should really go inside,” I murmur, not meaning a word of it as I pull her into my chest. I’m keeping her warm. That’s it.
Freya nuzzles closer. “This is far better.”
I curse again as desire rolls through me. It’s a good thing her face is in my neck, or I would already be kissing her. “Saying things like that is going to get me into trouble, Princess,” I growl.
“I am a princess, yes. I can say whatever I would like.”
“And I’m a bodyguard who should really keep his mouth shut instead of saying…” The words stick in my throat. Probably for the best. I was vulnerable enough as it was before I fell asleep, and the later the night gets, the more exposed I feel.
But Freya lifts her head, her bright blue eyes boring into mine. “Saying what, Elliot?”
I shake my head. It shouldn’t be this hard, but it is. “I’m not the kind of guy who regularly shares his feelings, Rapunzel.”
“It may come as a shock, but neither am I.” Chuckling, she reaches up and brushes her fingers along my jaw. “You and Derek are more similar than you may realize, keeping things to yourself the way you do, but you are safe here, Elliot. With me. I will never treat your feelings lightly.”
“Being a king sounds terrifying.” The admission slips from my tongue so easily, but it’s a big one. With a lot of implications I can’t take back now that they’re out there, like the fact that I have considered marriage with this woman even though that’s completely insane.
Not to mention impossible.
With her hand still touching my face, Freya bites her lip—taunting me—before she says, “Can I let you in on a secret?”
I nod, my eyes locked on her mouth.
“Being a queen sounds terrifying too.”
“What?” Thoroughly distracted, I meet her gaze and find her eyes welling up with tears. The sight sends a sharp pain straight to my chest. I’m already embracing her, so I rub my hand up and down her arm in the hope that I can give her some kind of comfort. “But you’ve always wanted—”
“To be queen,” she finishes with a tiny nod. “Since I was a little girl, I have wanted nothing else so badly. I knew it would be difficult, but it never frightened me. Until recently.”
I curse, increasing the speed of my rubbing. “You were shot at. That would scare anyone.”
“Yes, but I was not talking about that. There will always be risks, but I am surrounded by the best of men who will do everything they can to keep me safe. What frightens me is you.”
My hand freezes. “Me?”
“Yes.” Her fingers run along my jaw one more time before sliding down my neck to my chest, lower and lower until she hovers over the gauze taped to my side.
“I worried I had lost you, Elliot, and I pictured a world where you did not exist anymore.
A world where I became queen and married a stranger and lived out my days in bare contentment, lacking anything resembling happiness.
“I am afraid that if I take the throne, that mediocrity I imagined will be my future because, beyond the laws making it impossible, I can never ask you to take up the mantle with me. I can never force you into a life you are not prepared for.”
I can’t resist anymore. Tilting her chin up with my finger, I press my lips to hers and close my eyes, losing myself in the sensation of the kiss. This woman is so good. Everything she does is to the benefit of everyone but herself, and I am in awe of her.
And I can’t get enough of kissing her.
Even though I hold back, contenting myself with a closed-mouth kiss unlike the one last night, it still sets my heart racing. I lean more into Freya, but it’s not long before my wound starts to ache sharply. Groaning, I pull back and curse my body for interrupting yet again.
Freya smiles and presses her hand to my chest once more, and the skin beneath her palm seems to burn. “It is for the best that I cannot kiss you the way I wish to, Elliot Reid.”
“Nope. That’s never a good thing.” It’s really annoying that my body endured everything I put it through in the Special Forces, but one tiny bullet can get in the way of what I really want.
“Freya, I…” I don’t even know what I want to say as I gaze into her eyes.
There are too many questions when it comes to a romance between us, and I don’t even know if I would be a good partner let alone a good monarch.
But I want to be more than what I am, if only because that’s what she sees in me. I’ve never felt this way. About anyone.
I desperately want to be the man she thinks I can be.
Someone clears their throat, and I look up to find Hex standing a few feet away, his eyes discerning as he studies the way we’re cuddled together. He looks worried. Even sad. He knows as well as we do that this can’t end well.
“Mum wants to talk to you,” he says to Freya. His eyes jump to me. “And Gregor is on the line for you, El.”
“Mum already knows I am perfectly safe thanks to Elliot,” Freya says without any indication that she plans to move anytime soon.
I, however, know I need to talk to the head of security sooner than later, which means reality is coming whether I want it to or not. “You need to talk to your mom,” I murmur, touching my forehead to her temple because I don’t have the energy to resist.
She sighs. “Duty calls.”
“And you.” I narrow my eyes at Hex. “You were supposed to get out of the arena.”
Hex doesn’t look nearly as repentant as he should. “Technically I did.”
“Going after suspects.”
He shrugs. “I got a good look at a couple of them.”
“Then you can pass that information to the RIA.”
He wrinkles his nose, his distaste for the agency coming through his nonchalance. “Why?”
“Because an intelligence agency is exactly the department who should investigate dissent against the crown. Not a prince.”
With a hefty sigh, Hex rolls his eyes and grabs his phone.
“You’re right, but I am only doing this because no one else saw the blokes’ faces.
If this makes the RIA even more persistent about me joining them, I’m blaming you.
” He looks at Freya, some of his frustration softening.
“Sander’s on the phone with Mum.” Then at me again. “Carsten has Gregor on the line.”
Waiting until he wanders back toward Wulfric’s cabin before I say anything, I slowly loosen my hold on the princess. “I guess we have to get back to reality.”
“I am terrified of what my mother is going to say.”
“I’m equally afraid of Gregor. I can only imagine the messages on my phone right now. It’s somewhere in the woods with my gun.” I’ll need to send one of the guards to find both things.
Freya snickers. “Poor Runa was holding on to mine, and I am certain Derek has heard of what happened at the debate and has tried to reach me many times. My friends are probably as panicked as my mother.”
“On the plus side, I doubt anyone will be talking about our stolen glances for a while.”
With bright eyes, Freya surprises me with a quick kiss against my lips before she stands, leaving the blanket with me. “Or stolen kisses,” she says with a smirk. “Can you imagine what the internet will do when they find out?”
When. Not if. It takes me a lot longer than I’d like to get to my feet as my body protests the movement, and Freya is already halfway to the cabin before I find the strength to start walking. But she looks back at me and smiles so warmly that I completely forget about the pain.
All I can think about is a future full of stolen kisses and shared blankets.
There’s no way this is going to end well.